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HAROLD  BEGB/E 


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BT  101  . B43  1914 

Begbie,  Harold,  1871-1929. 

The  proof  of  God 


V* 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/proofofgodOObegb 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


HAROLD  BEGBIE 

Author  of  “  Twice  Born  Men  ” 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 


London 


and 


Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1914,  by 

FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  125  N.  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  St.,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:  100  Princes  Street 


AUTHOR’S  NOTE 


SINCE  no  two  philosophers  and  no  two 
men  of  science  use  terms  in  precisely 
the  same  sense,  I  feel  that  it  is  not 
greatly  laid  upon  me  to  offer  either  ex¬ 
planation  or  apologies  for  the  simplicity 
of  the  language  with  which  I  have  ven¬ 
tured  to  trespass  on  their  two  spheres. 
Nor  does  it  pressingly  seem  to  me  a 
bounden  duty  that  I  should  adopt  a  placa¬ 
tory  pose  on  the  score  of  my  book’s  brev¬ 
ity,  since  length,  too  often  the  mere  stam¬ 
mer  of  obscurity,  is  only  excusable  in  the 
original  philosopher. 

My  modest  book,  the  first  word  in  a 
trilogy,  does  but  attempt  to  gather  up  and 
present  in  a  companionable  summary  the 
discoveries  and  speculations  of  those 

learned  men  so  far  in  advance  of  the  gen- 

* 

eral  host  that  they  have  almost  forgotten 
the  Doric  of  humanity.  Futurism,  which 
is  rebellion  against  dulness,  pomposity, 
and  the  groove,  may  perhaps  in  its  thrust 
for  reality  give  us  some  day  a  race  of 
philosophers  so  lucid  and  so  charming 

3 


4 


AUTHOR’S  NOTE 


that  they  will  actually  by  their  own  speech 
help  the  multitude  of  mankind  to  think 
less  untruthfully  and  to  behave  less  mis¬ 
takenly.  In  the  meantime,  one  who  has 
been  a  happy  and  attentive  guest  of  the 
philosophers  may  be  allowed  his  gossip 
and  his  table-talk  in  the  homes  of  the 
simple. 


H.  B. 


CONTENTS 


I 

Concerning  Origins 

• 

7 

II 

Concerning  Evolution  . 

• 

29 

III 

Letter  One:  Concerning  the 

Be- 

liefs  of  Men  of  Science  . 

• 

4a 

IV 

Concerning  Hypotheses  . 

• 

65 

y 

Concerning  a  Knowable  God 

• 

94 

VI 

Concerning  Personality 

• 

116 

VII 

Letter  Two  :  Concerning 

THE 

Tendency  op  Modern  Thought  142 


“  The  region  of  Religion  and  the  region  of  a  completer 
Science  are  one.” — Oliver  Lodge. 

“  Since  the  germ  of  life  appeared  on  earth,  its 
history  has  been  a  history  not  only  of  gradual  self- 
adaptation  to  a  known  environment,  but  of  gradual 
discovery  of  an  environment,  always  there,  but  un¬ 
known.” — F.  W.  H.  Myers. 

“  I  see  everywhere  the  inevitable  expression  of  the 
Infinite  in  the  world.” — Pasteur. 

“  While  it  may  be  possible,  setting  out  from  mind, 
to  account  for  mechanism,  it  is  impossible,  setting  out 
from  mechanism,  to  account  for  mind.” — James  Ward. 

“  The  grand  law  of  continuity  cannot  fail  to  be  true 
beyond  the  narrow  sphere  of  vision.” — A.  R.  Wallace. 


I 


CONCERNING  ORIGINS 

I  WAS  walking  from  Mr.  Bartlett’s  ad¬ 
mirable  establishment  in  Grosvenor 
Street  to  Westminster  Abbey,  follow¬ 
ing  the  way  which  leads  by  St.  James’s 
Street  to  St.  James’s  Park,  and  had  just 
crossed  the  road  opposite  Marlborough 
House,  when  I  was  overtaken  by  my  friend 
Rupert,  whose  stride  had  the  pace  and  im¬ 
perial  misgivings  of  political  perturbation. 
He  caught  hold  of  my  arm,  and  turned  to 
make  examination  of  my  face.  “  Incorri¬ 
gible  Idler!  ”  he  exclaimed,  “  are  you  not 
stirred  by  these  events?  are  you  not 
alarmed  for  civilization?  do  you  not  feel 
that  it  is  a  time  when  patriots  should  take 
to  action?  ” 

“  Let  me  reflect!  ”  I  replied.  “  No,  Ru¬ 
pert,  I  don’t  think  I  do.  On  the  other  hand 
I  feel  that  it  is  a  time  for  patriots  to  stop 
talking,  particularly  the  front-bench  patri¬ 
ots  of  the  House  of  Commons  whose  repeti¬ 
tious  oratory  I  find  quite  intolerably  tire¬ 
some.  Now  if  the  honest  plain  men  on 
the  back  benches - ” 


7 


8 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


“My  friend/ ’  lie  said  gravely,  “the 
fabric  of  society  is  in  danger;  the  founda¬ 
tions  on  which  our  civilization  has  rested 
for  a  thousand  years  are  beginning  to 
totter.  We  are  on  the  brink  of  civil  war. 
If  you  knew  what  I  happen  to  know  as  a 

fact -  But  the  son  of  Sirach  tells  us  we 

are  not  to  repeat  what  we  hear.  4  Hast  thou 
heard  a  word?  Let  it  die  with  thee:  be  of 
good  courage,  it  will  not  burst  thee.’  ” 
“  But,  Rupert,”  I  continued  after  this 
admonishment,  “  people  who  speak  about 
the  fabric  of  society,  always  make  use  of 
that  term  in  a  manner  which  attributes  con¬ 
siderable  beauty,  exquisite  order,  and  an 
almost  finical  perfection  to  the  structure 
which  they  ask  us  to  believe  is  threatened 
with  collapse.  To  you,  my  dear  Rupert, 
who  sleep  in  a  clean  bed,  eat  your  break¬ 
fast  at  what  hour  you  choose,  select  your 
day’s  raiment  from  cupboards,  wardrobes, 
and  chests  of  drawers  crowded  with  fine 
things,  and  who  need  do  nothing  at  all 
from  one  hour  to  another  in  order  to  insure 
a  continuance  of  these  pleasant  circum¬ 
stances  for  the  rest  of  your  life,  even  be¬ 
queathing  those  luxurious  circumstances 
to  your  heirs, — to  you  and  such  as  you,  this 
structure  of  civilization  must  seem  a  very 
wise  and  admirable  achievement,  something 
so  magical  and  providential  that  to  lay  a 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


9 


rough  hand  upon  it,  nay,  to  call  it  only  a 
hard  name,  necessarily  partakes  of  the 
nature  of  blasphemy.  But  for  masses  of 
men,  and  for  masses  of  women — particu¬ 
larly  weak  and  delicate  women  who  work  in 
our  soulless  factories,  or  who  are  sold  into 
very  foul  iniquity,  or  who  find  their  natural 
maternity  a  curse  instead  of  a  glory — your 
fabric  of  society  is  a  Bastille,  a  Newgate,  a 
Bedlam.  Always  remember  this  fact,  I  beg 
you,  when  people  speak  with  twittering 
misgivings  of  the  social  fabric.  Always  re¬ 
member  the  foundations.’ ’ 

“  Of  course  there  are  drawbacks  and  im¬ 
perfections;  but  what  can  we  do  to  alter 
them?  ” 

4  4  You  are  going  to  the  House  of  Com¬ 
mons,”  I  answered;  4 4  tell  me,  for  what 
purpose?  ” 

4 4  To  avert  a  revolution!  ” 

“  Then  surely,”  I  said,  “  you  are  not 
a  patriot,  but  an  enemy  of  the  people. 
For  only  a  revolution,  I  am  very  sure,  can 
make  this  muddle  of  human  life  tolerable 
to  poor  people.  Do  you  want  things  to 
go  on  as  they  are?  That  is  impossible. 
Evolution  is  not  only  change,  but  creative 
change.  ’ 9 

“  You  tell  me,”  lie  demanded,  “  that  you 
actually  desire  to  see  a  revolution?  ” 

“  I  cannot  help  myself,  Rupert:  I  hunger 


10 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


and  thirst — will  yon  believe  it,  I  pray  for 
a  revolution.” 

“  Can  you  contemplate,  without  horror 
and  without  dreadful  anxiety,  the  rage  and 
hatred  and  bestial  passions  which  take  pos¬ 
session  of  men’s  minds  in  periods  of  po¬ 
litical  violence?  Is  our  condition  so  bad 
that  only  devilries  such  as  marked  the 
French  Revolution  can  work  amendment? 
Upon  my  soul,  I  am  almost  ashamed  to  be 
walking  with  you !  ’  ’ 

“  My  dear  Rupert,  I  am  no  whit  more 
bloodthirsty  than  you,  and  I  certainly  do 
not  desire  to  see  any  such  revolution  as 
your  Parliamentary  brain  immediately 
conjures  up.  Why  are  the  rich  always  in  a 
state  of  fear  concerning  the  poor?  Why  is 
it  that  Toryism  carries  about  with  it  so 
guilty  a  conscience?  I  desire  to  see  a  rev¬ 
olution  at  the  centre  of  life,  not  along  the 
distant  circumference.  In  other  words,  I 
desire  to  work  where  the  politician  never 
works,  at  the  souls  of  men.  Now,  do  you 
feel  safe?  ” 

“  Ha,  the  soul!  ” 

“  You  laugh  quite  happily;  there  is  now 
no  rattle  in  your  throat !  ’  ’ 

“  You  are  preposterous !  A  moment  ago 
you  were  talking  like  an  anarchist ;  you  are 
talking  now  like  a  parson.  This  is  not  a 
time  for  wild  words  or  pious  humbug.  It 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  11 

is  a  time  for  calm  thinking  and  wise  judi¬ 
cious  well-considered  action/ * 

44  Then  you  think  that  life  has  no 
centre?  ” 

44  What  do  you  mean  by  that?  ” 

44  You  do  not  believe  in  the  soul?  ” 

44  Nobody  does.” 

44  Nor  in  God?  ” 

44  You  are  very  old-fashioned.” 

44  Let  us  sit  down  for  a  moment,”  I  said, 
laying  a  hand  on  his  arm;  44  and  let  us 
talk  about  my  revolution.” 

44  Well,”  he  said,  taking  the  chair  at 
my  side  and  pulling  his  fine  trousers  over 
his  knees,  44  I  would  rather  talk  about  your 
revolution  than  your  God,  for  a  revolution 
may  come,  but  God  has  disappeared  for 
ever.”  As  he  said  this,  he  gave  me  a  look, 
and  when  he  had  finished  speaking,  he  con¬ 
templated  his  white  gaiters,  satisfied. 

44  But  my  revolution  is  also  my  God,”  I 
made  answer. 

44  You  must  be  simple  and  direct  in  your 
speech,”  he  said,  44  or  I  shall  leave  you.” 

44  For  the  front-bench  patriots?  Yet  you 
have  heard  all  that  they  have  to  say  hun¬ 
dreds  and  hundreds  of  times.  They  never 
change.  That  is  their  boast.” 

44  At  any  rate  they  are  men  of  action.” 

44  Well,  thought  is  necessary  to  action, 
so  let  us  see  how  we  can  prepare  your  mind 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


12 

for  these  men  of  action  whose  acts,  you 
will  grant,  are  continually  plunging  the 
nation  into  disorderly  and  excited  crises — 
crises,  by  the  way,  Rupert,  which  do  no¬ 
body  any  good.  I  will  tell  you  what  my 
revolution  is,  in  a  single  phrase.  My  rev¬ 
olution  is  to  make  men  and  women  believe 
in  a  very  obvious  fact,  namely,  the  exist¬ 
ence  of  God.  If  men  and  women  were  pro¬ 
foundly  convinced  that  God  exists  there 
would  be  a  bloodless  revolution ;  we  should 
all  begin  to  act  like  rational  creatures. 
The  trouble  in  the  political  world  is  caused 
by  greediness — the  same  appetite  which 
gives  stomach-ache  to  little  boys;  the  clash 
of  nations  and  classes  is  the  collision  be¬ 
tween  the  unpardonable  greediness  of  those 
who  have  great  possessions  and  the  par¬ 
donable  greediness  of  those  who  have  few 
possessions.  Greediness  is  the  enemy; 
and  the  only  cure  for  greediness  is 
God.  It  would  be  impossible  for  anyone 
to  overeat  himself  in  the  presence  of  God; 
and  it  is  impossible  for  any  man  who  has  a 
real  sense  of  God  in  his  soul  to  want  to 
overeat  himself.  But  people  don’t  believe 
in  God,  and  because  they  don’t  believe  in 
this  only  reasonable  Cause  and  Object  of 
existence,  political  life  is  always  in  a  con¬ 
dition  of  confusion:  there  is  a  struggle  to 
get  at  the  trough.” 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


13 


“  Yon  speak  surely  like  a  crazy  fellow,” 
lie  said,  ‘ ‘  when  you  aver  that  the  existence 
of  God  is  a  very  obvious  fact.  I  should  be 
inclined  to  doubt  your  reason  if  you  spoke 
of  God  as  a  poetic  hypothesis,  or  as  a  con¬ 
venient  postulate ;  but  when  you  dare  to  tell 
me  that  the  existence  of  God  is  a  very  ob¬ 
vious  fact,  why,  I  must  conclude  either  that 
you  are  crazy  or  that  you  wish  to  insult 
my  intelligence.” 

“  So  you  have  made  up  your  mind,  Ru¬ 
pert,  that  there  is  no  God?  ” 

“  Yes.” 

“  You  have  no  doubts  about  the  mat¬ 
ter?  ” 

“  None  whatever.” 

“  Then  you  think  that  there  is  no  mys¬ 
tery  in  life?  ” 

“  I  am  not  so  stupid  as  to  think  any¬ 
thing  of  the  kind.” 

“  At  any  rate  you  know  enough  to  see 
that  there  is  no  need  of  a  God.  You  have 
evidence - ” 

‘  ‘  Science  teaches  us  that  the  idea  of  God 
is  a  superstition.  The  whole  movement  of 
science  is  away  from  myth  to  reality;  the 
further  we  get  from  myth  the  more  we  take 
possession  of  nature.  Nature  will  never  be 
completely  under  the  dominion  of  man  un¬ 
til  he  has  ceased  to  dream  of  any  other 
world  than  this.” 


14 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


“  Oh,  I  love  to  hear  you  talk,  Rupert! 
You  can’t  think  how  endearing  your  fresh, 
frank,  honest  conversation  makes  you ;  and 
it  is  so  reassuring — reassuring  I  mean  for 
those  who  want  a  political  revolution.  And 
there  is  some  truth  in  what  you  say,  a  good 
deal  of  truth,  although  you  begin  with  a 
supposition  that  is  entirely  false.  You 
must  really  allow  me  to  protest  against  that 
erring  supposition  before  I  proceed  to  sug¬ 
gest  another  line  of  thought  to  your  mind. 
You  say  that  science  teaches — what  a  bold 
word,  my  politician! — science  teaches  that 
the  idea  of  God  is  a  superstition!  Now, 
only  a  member  of  Parliament  or  a  member 
of  that  equally  comic  body,  the  Rationalist 
Press  Association,  could  make  such  a  mad 
asseveration  as  this.  Science  teaches  noth¬ 
ing  of  the  kind,  Rupert.  Science  teaches 
nothing  at  all  in  the  sphere  of  theology  or 
religion.  But  in  the  discoveries  of  science, 
men  who  understand  the  laws  of  evidence 
and  appreciate  the  limitations  of  language 
may  still  find  reasons,  though  not  the  chief 
reasons,  for  believing  in  the  existence  of 
God.  I  shall  present  to  your  mind  our 
modern  idea  of  God,  first  with  the  evidence 
of  science  to  support  me,  and  afterwards 
with  the  reasoning  of  philosophy  to  com¬ 
plete  my  argument — philosophy  which  uni¬ 
fies  and  completes  the  detached  sciences. 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


15 


With  science  alone  I  could  make  out  a  very 
good  case  for  the  existence  of  God,  but 
with  philosophy  I  can  compel  you  to  agree 
that  the  existence  of  God  is  an  obvious  fact 
of  the  universe/ ’ 

“  I  am  amazed  to  hear  you  speak  so 
dogmatically/’  he  said,  “  but  I  suspect  that 
you  think  to  puzzle  me  with  unusual  words 
and  to  overawe  me  with  an  exhibition  of 
casuistry.  My  friend,  I  am  not  to  be  caught 
in  that  fashion.” 

“  On  the  contrary,  Rupert,  we  will  use 
the  language  of  conversation,  and  our  logic 
shall  be  the  simple  logic  of  common  sense 
and  honest  thinking.” 

“  Very  well  then,  I  will  listen  to  you.” 

“  You  are  a  very  dear  obliging  fellow. 
Now  will  you  tell  me,  Rupert,  first  of  all, 
what  is  the  most  obvious  fact  of  human 
experience?  ” 

“  The  world  which  we  inhabit.” 

“  I  will  agree,  though  I  had  hoped  for  a 
better  answer.” 

“  What  did  you  expect  me  to  say?  ” 

“  Life.” 

“  Life  is  certainly  as  obvious  as  the 
earth;  if  it  helps  you  to  be  brief  I  will 
amend  my  answer  to  suit  your  question.” 

4  4  That  is  accommodating,  nay,  kind  and 
generous  of  you,  since  I  think  you  take  me 
for  an  enemy.  Well,  I  will  accept  your 


16 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


amendment,  for  it  is  the  truer  answer.  The 
most  obvious  fact  of  human  experience  is 
Life.  We  cannot  be  positively  certain  of 
anything  else.  The  very  world  which  we 
see  with  human  eyes,  the  very  sounds  which 
we  hear  with  human  ears,  the  very  sensa- 
sations  which  we  feel  with  human  nerve- 
centres,  may  be  altogether  different  from 
that  which  they  seem  to  us,  may,  indeed, 
have  no  permanence  at  all  in  reality.  But 
Life, — that  is  fact.  Cogito,  ergo  sum. 
Look  at  these  little  sparrows,  too,  dusting 
themselves  close  at  our  feet:  at  those  im¬ 
ported  pelicans  solemnly  reposing  under 
the  trees:  at  those  snow-white  children  of 
Leda  thrusting  their  sinuous  necks  under 
the  water :  at  this  very  handsome  but  bored 
policeman  coming  towards  us  in  boots 
which  entirely  destroy  the  pleasure  of 
walking :  at  this  terrier  tugging  a  little  girl 
by  its  head,  and  barking  like  an  angry  poli¬ 
tician  as  it  approaches  that  unexcited  re¬ 
triever, — here  we  have  Life,  Life  which  is 
at  once  the  most  obvious  fact  of  human  ex¬ 
perience  and  the  supreme  mystery  for  the 
man  of  science  and  the  philosopher.  Ru¬ 
pert,  what  is  Life?  Have  you  ever  asked 
yourself  that  question — you  who  are  so  in¬ 
dustrious  in  seeking  to  alter  the  conditions 
of  Life?  What  is  this  thing  to  which  we 
give  the  name  of  Life?  ” 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


17 


“The  politician  cannot  afford  to  ask 
suck  questions  or  to  weave  any  meticulous 
definitions.  Life  is  mystery.  Nobody 
knows  at  present  what  it  is,  perhaps  no¬ 
body  ever  will  know.  I  shall  light  a  cigar, 
for  I  see  now  that  you  are  in  one  of  the 
very  worst  of  your  Socratic  moods.  ” 

“  But  Life  is  here?  ” 

“  Clearly.” 

“You  are  sure  of  that?  ” 

“  Well,  of  course.  One  sees  it  in  oth¬ 
ers  and  one  is  conscious  of  it  in  him¬ 
self.” 

“  Now  tell  me,  Rupert,  how  did  Life 
begin  on  this  planet?  ” 

“  Do  you  want  me  to  summarize  Dar¬ 
win  and  Haeckel?  ” 

“  I  want  you  to  tell  me  how  you  account 
for  Life,  since  you  have  done  away  with  a 
Giver  of  Life.” 

“  Well,  that  is  easy  enough.  Life  is 
the  result  of  evolution.  It  began  in  some 
slimy  substance  which  men  of  science  call 
protoplasm.” 

“  I  will  not  ask  you  to  account  for  pro¬ 
toplasm,  which  is  itself  living  matter.  I 
will  not  ask  you  to  account  for  evolution. 
Those  would  be  hard  questions  for  you, 
Rupert,  albeit  with  your  political  brain  I 
am  quite  sure  you  would  very  easily  elude 
a  God  in  framing  your  answers  to  them. 


18 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


Nor  will  I  ask  yon  to  explain  your  cart- 
before-tke-horse  affirmation  that  Life  is 
the  result  of  evolution!  No;  I  will  ask 
you  a  very  much  simpler  question.  Will 
you  tell  me  how  this  protoplasm  came  to 
the  earth?  ” 

“  How  it  came  to  the  earth?  ” 

“  Yes, — how  this  Life  Substance  got 
here?  ” 

“  But  it  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  earth. 
It  didn’t  get  here  at  all.  It  was  in  the 
earth  and  of  the  earth  from  the  very 
beginning. 9  9 

“  Then  you  must  tell  me  how  the  earth 
became  the  earth.” 

“  That  is  easy,  too.  I  happen  to  know 
all  about  that, — it’s  a  part  of  the  nebular 
hypothesis.  By  every  school  of  science  it 
is  now  accepted  that  the  earth  was  once 
part  of  the  sun;  the  sun  boiled  up  the 
earth;  the  earth  got  as  far  away  from  the 
sun  as  gravitation  would  allow  and  then, 
answering  to  the  pull  of  the  sun,  pro¬ 
ceeded  to  revolve  round  its  parent,  like  a 
good  and  obedient  little  boy.  The  match 
which  I  just  threw  away  existed  in  the  sun 
before  the  earth  had  started  to  make  a 
career  of  its  own.” 

“  How  easy,  as  you  say,  to  explain  the 
earth!  ” 

“  Well,  it  is  undisputed  that  such  was 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  19 

the  earth’s  origin;  at  least  it  was  a  few 

years  ago,  for  I  heard  a  lecture  by - ” 

“  But  Life — your  magical  proto¬ 

plasm?  ” 

“  I  don’t  understand  you.” 

“  You  have  told  me,  Rupert — quite  ab¬ 
surdly — that  the  earth  came  from  the  sun. 
That  is  so  absurd  that  I  won’t  stop  to  tell 
you  how  absurd  it  is.  The  earth  did  not 
come  from  the  sun;  it  was,  however,  com¬ 
pacted  of  the  same  materials  as  exist  in 
the  sun,  and  at  one  time  was  very  much 
like  the  sun.  But  I  am  not  interested  in 
rocks  and  water;  I  am  not  interested  in 
stubborn  inorganic  matter:  I  am  inter¬ 
ested  in  delicate,  fictile,  and  evolving  Life. 
Did  Life  come  from  your  sun,  or  from 
sun-like  materials?  ” 

“  Potential  Life  was  certainly  in  the 
sun  or  of  one  substance  with  the  sun. 
Everything  on  and  in  this  earth  was  once 
in  the  sun.  Tennyson,  by  the  way,  speaks 
of  the  fluid  haze  of  light  which  eddied  into 
suns — that  wheeling  cast  the  planets.  I’m 
not  such  a  fool  as  you  think!  ” 

“  You  tell  me,  then,  that  your  proto¬ 
plasm  was  part  and  parcel  of  the  sun?  ” 

“  At  any  rate,  it  was  part  of  the  same 
nebula  as  the  sun.” 

“  How  hot  is  the  sun?  ” 


20 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


“  How  hot?  Several  times  hotter  than 
I  should  care  to  say.” 

“  And  protoplasm  existed  in  that  great 
heat!  ” 

“  Why  not?  ” 

“  But,  my  dear  Rupert,  you  can  boil  a 
germ  to  death  with  hot  water.  How  could 
your  delicate  Life  Substance  contrive  to 
exist  in  roaring  whirlpools  of  molten 
liquid?  Consider  for  a  moment.  The 
hottest  water  of  which  we  have  knowledge 
must  be  colder  than  ice  in  comparison 
with  such  heat  as  bubbles  in  the  sun.  If 
hot  water  can  destroy  the  germs  of  life, 
how  could  they  have  existed  not  only  in 
the  sun ,  as  you  say,  but  on  this  earth, 
which  for  many  millions  of  years  must 
have  been  a  flaming  furnace?  Now,  this 
is  a  question  which  you  must  really  an¬ 
swer.  It  is  the  greatest  of  brute  questions. 
We  want  to  decide  how  Life  arrived  on 
this  planet.  You  told  me  that  it  was  in 
the  earth  and  of  the  earth  from  the  very 
beginning;  but  at  the  next  moment  you 
told  me  that  the  earth  came  from  the  sun. 
If  the  earth  came,  as  science  assures  us 
that  it  did,  from  the  flaming  nebula,  it 
could  not  have  brought  its  protoplasm 
along  with  it.  It  may  have  brought  the 
scarlet  top  of  the  match  which  you  just 
now  threw  away,  but  I  defy  you  to  tell  me 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


21 


that  it  brought  an  ounce  of  wax  with  it. 
Life,  then,  must  have  found  its  way  into 
the  earth,  and  millions  of  years  after  the 
earth  leapt  flaming  from  the  nebula.  How 
was  it  introduced?  ” 

44  That  I  cannot  say.” 

44  But  you  will  agree  with  me  that  it 
must  have  been  introduced?  ” 

4  4  I  certainly  do  not  see  how  it  could 
have  existed  in  the  sun.  That  is  an  idea, 
I  confess,  which  had  not  occurred  to  me.” 

44  Or  on  the  earth,  during  the  immense 
period  when  the  whole  body  of  our  planet 
was  swathed  in  mountainous  flames,  and 
when  the  core  of  it  was  like  molten 
brass?  ” 

44  No;  I  do  not  see  how  Life  existed  on 
the  earth  at  that  time.” 

44  Then  how  did  it  come?  ” 

44  I  tell  you,  I  cannot  say.” 

44  But  you  are  prepared  to  do  without 
a  Life-Giver?  ” 

4  4  I  start  with  protoplasm,  with  the  orig¬ 
inal  Life  Substance;  beyond  that  I  cannot 
go,  science  cannot  go, — the  origin  of  Mat¬ 
ter  is  a  problem  utterly  insoluble,  I  have 
heard  that  said  by  a  man  of  science.” 

44  But  we  must  have  some  idea  how  this 
protoplasm  arrived  on  our  planet.  You 
tell  me  that  to  believe  in  a  Life-Giver  is 
to  be  superstitious;  you  also  tell  me  that 


22 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


protoplasm  could  not  have  endured  the 
blaze  of  the  nebula  and  the  heat  of  the 
cooling  earth.  Well,  save  me  from  super¬ 
stition  by  teaching  me  how  to  account  by 
mechanical  means  for  the  appearance  of 
Life — even  for  4  a  few  primitive  proto¬ 
plasts  gliding  in  a  quiet  pool  ’ !  How  came 
these  apples  into  the  dumpling?  ” 

44  You  are  presuming  on  my  ignorance 
of  science.  If  you  were  to  put  this  ques¬ 
tion,  which  quite  gravels  me,  to  a  physicist 
he  would  certainly  be  able  to  give  you  an 
answer.’  ’ 

44  Here  you  are  again  at  your  erring 
supposition,  my  dear  Rupert!  You  have 
got  it  into  your  head  that  men  of  science 
have  decided  to  do  without  a  God,  and  all 
your  opinions  are  swayed  by  this  unfor¬ 
tunate  misjudgment.  What  will  you  say 
when  I  tell  you  that  the  most  eminent  men 
of  science  during  the  last  fifty  years  have 
seen  no  antagonism  whatever  between  sci¬ 
ence  and  religion,  and  that  many  of  them 
have  been  Christians — Lord  Kelvin,  for 
example,  the  most  illustrious  of  them  all?  ” 

44  I  should  want  to  have  documentary 
proof  of  that  assertion.” 

4  4 1  will  give  you  that  proof  on  another 
occasion.  In  the  meantime  I  wish  to  ac¬ 
quaint  you  with  the  answer  which  one  man 
of  science  has  been  bold  enough  to  give  to 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


23 

this  difficult  question  of  the  arrival  of  Life 
on  our  familiar  earth.  Now,  Rupert,  you 
are  not  a  man  of  science,  but,  in  spite  of 
being  a  politician,  you  have  a  residual 
sense  of  humour;  I  beg  you  to  summon 
your  humour  to  the  front  of  your  brain  in 
order  to  welcome  this  explanation  of  a 
very  brilliant  man  of  science.  He  said 
that  Life  probably  arrived  upon  this 
planet  in  a  shower  of  meteoric  dust.” 

“  After  the  earth  had  cooled,  I  sup¬ 
pose?  ” 

“  My  dear  Rupert!  ” 

“  What  have  I  said  to  amuse  you?  ” 

“  You  should  have  said  nothing  at  all. 
You  should  have  laughed.  But  you  did 
not  even  smile.  I  am  disappointed  in  you, 
Rupert.” 

“  Is  it  absurd  to  suppose  that  proto¬ 
plasm  came  to  earth  in  a  shower  of  mete¬ 
oric  dust?  I  am  not  so  sure!  ” 

“  The  answer  is  too  great  a  joke  for 
common  sense  and  too  great  an  accident 
for  science.  Science,  Rupert,  you  will  per¬ 
haps  be  surprised  to  learn,  does  not  believe 
in  accidents.  No ;  I  will  tell  you  what  sci¬ 
ence  thinks  about  the  matter.  Science 
thinks,  when  it  puts  its  feet  on  the  fender, 
that  the  elements  which  go  to  make  up 
protoplasm  did  exist  in  the  earth  from  the 
first  moment  of  its  existence.  The  ele- 


24 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


ments  were  there,  not  the  protoplasm. 
Protoplasm,  then,  was  an  immense  stride 
in  the  process  of  evolution;  the  first  cell 
which  answered  to  stimuli  was  a  matter 
for  considerable  congratulation — the  first 
amoeba  was  what  you  would  call  a  regular 
knock-out.  Now,  that  is  what  science 
thinks  when  it  is  not  at  work,  when  it  is 
not  teaching,  as  you  would  say.  It  is  a 
pleasing  and  an  interesting  hypothesis. 
But  since  science  cannot  witness,  and 
therefore  cannot  describe  the  evolution  of 
protoplasm,  we  are  obliged,  if  we  stick  to 
exact  science,  to  start  with  protoplasm; 
we  are  not  allowed  to  go  back  to  the  ele¬ 
ments  of  protoplasm.  Well,  I  argue  that 
the  man  who  cannot  explain  to  me  beyond 
all  question  how  protoplasm  is  what  proto¬ 
plasm  seems  to  be,  must  not  tell  me  either 
that  he  can  account  for  protoplasm  or  that 
he  can  do  without  the  hypothesis  of  God  in 
his  theory  of  the  universe.  In  other  words, 
Rupert,  even  accepting  the  theory,  the 
mere  hypothesis,  that  the  elements  of  pro¬ 
toplasm  did  exist  in  the  fire  mist,  and  that 
those  elements  became  protoplasm  in  the 
course  of  some  aeons,  we  must  still  ask  (if 
we  are  to  have  a  complete  answer  to  the 
riddle  of  the  universe,  an  answer  which 
wholly  excludes  the  other  hypothesis  of  a 
Spirit  expressing  Himself  in  creation) 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


25 


how  those  elements  came  to  be,  how  they 
obtained  their  power  to  combine,  how  the 
nebula  came  to  be,  and  how  it  obtained  its 
power  to  combine  in  masses.” 

“  Oh,  but  you  are  going  back  to  the 
origin  of  origins!  ” 

“  Let  us  be  perfectly  frank  and  clear.  I 
am  not  attacking  science;  I  am  not  even 
asking  it  for  explanations.  Science  does 
not  profess  to  explain  anything,  and  does 
not  go  back  to  ultimate  origins.  But  I  am 
attacking  those  men  who  conclude  from 
what  they  think  science  teaches  them  that 
the  very  hypothesis  of  God  is  ruled  out  of 
the  physical  universe.  I  do  not  mean, 
Rupert,  that  because  science  cannot  tell 
you  the  origin  of  things — the  origin  of  the 
elements  of  the  nebula,  for  example — that 
you  must,  therefore,  believe  in  the  First 
Cause  of  deistic  philosophy,  the  First 
Cause  who  made  things  more  or  less  well, 
more  or  less  awkwardly,  and  then  with¬ 
drew  to  see  how  they  would  work.  But  I 
do  mean  that  you  have  no  right  to  deny 
the  greatest  evidence  of  God’s  existence, 
the  evidence  which  exists  in  yourself,  be¬ 
cause  science  can  give  you  a  more  or  less 
complete  description  of  the  way  in  which 
physical  things  have  arrived  at  their  pres¬ 
ent  state  from  a  former  state. 

“  And  I  also  mean  that  even  accepting 


26 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


every  theory  of  science  for  things  as  they 
are,  by  the  very  fact  that  things  are  what 
they  are  and  not  what  they  were,  a  man 
may  still  see,  even  in  the  mechanism  of  the 
universe,  reasons  for  belief  in  God — not 
the  First  Cause,  in  the  bad  sense  of  that 
term,  but  the  Spirit  that  causes  now.  Men 
like  you  speak  as  if  the  mechanism  of  the 
universe  not  only  made  itself,  but  has  now 
finished  making  itself.  There  is  nothing 
doing  in  the  universe ;  the  wheels  are  turn¬ 
ing  and  will  go  on  turning  till  they  stop, 
making  nothing  more.  But  can  you  even 
tell  me  how  the  movements  of  the  satellites 
of  Neptune  and  Uranus  fit  absolutely  into 
the  nebular  hypothesis?  What  does  as¬ 
tronomy  say  on  the  subject?  Astronomy 
says,  1  the  great  evolution  which  has 
wrought  the  solar  system  into  form  has 
not  yet  finished  its  work ;  it  is  still  in  prog¬ 
ress.’  Evolution,  working  with  elements 
the  origin  of  which  we  cannot  determine, 
is  still  at  work.  The  universe  is  not  fin¬ 
ished.  Confess  to  me  now,  Rupert,  that 
by  no  fact  of  science  can  you  explain  the 
existence  of  things  as  they  are  or  as  they 
were.” 

“  I  will  make  that  confession  very  will¬ 
ingly,  but  I  do  not  say  that  a  man  of  sci¬ 
ence,  a  follower  of  Haeckel,  for  example, 
would  be  so  docile  and  obliging.” 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


£7 


“  But  you  will  agree,  all  the  same,  that 
if  Haeckel,  or  Laplace  before  him,  had 
really  and  completely  found  the  answer  to 
the  riddle  of  the  universe,  men  so  very 
eminent  in  physical  science  as  Kelvin  and 
Lodge  could  scarcely  be  so  ignorant  as  to 
talk  about  God  and  to  persist  in  worship¬ 
ping  the  Idea  of  God.  There  must  at  least 
be  an  element  of  doubt  in  Haeckel’s  answer 
to  the  riddle!  ” 

“  I  confess  that  what  you  say  about  men 
of  science  surprises  me.” 

4  4  Well,  I  will  proceed  now  to  my  second 
argument  for  belief  in  God,  and  after  that, 
while  you  are  giving  yourself, — to  no  pur¬ 
pose,  I  fear, — a  headache  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  I  will  return  to  my  home  and 
draw  you  up  a  brief  statement  concerning 
the  real  position  of  men  of  science  in  this 
great  concernment  of  God’s  existence. 
For  the  present  give  me  credit  for  being 
an  honest,  truth-seeking  man,  since  I  am 
not  a  party  politician,  and  wholly  disabuse 
your  mind  of  the  vulgar  error  that  science 
is  on  the  side  of  materialism.  Listen  to 
what  I  now  have  to  say  with  no  disposition 
in  your  mind  to  suppose  that  men  of  sci¬ 
ence  would  dispute  my  arguments.  Sir 
George  Stokes  was  once  asked  if  it  had 
been  his  experience  to  find  that  the  great¬ 
est  men  of  science  were  irreligious.  He 


28 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


replied,  1  That  has  not  been  my  experience, 
but  the  reverse /  I  assure  you  that  it  is  as 
general  now  as  it  was  in  Bacon’s  day  for 
men  of  erudition,  men  of  science,  to  believe 
in  the  existence  of  God.  ‘  A  little  Philos¬ 
ophy  inclinetli  Man’s  Mind  to  Atheism;  but 
depth  in  Philosophy  bringeth  Men’s  Minds 
about  to  Religion.’  Atheism,  throughout 
the  history  of  the  world,  has  been  the 
exception,  never  the  rule.” 


II 


CONCERNING  EVOLUTION 
If  THETHER  the  House  of  Com- 


w 


rnons,”  he  said,  4 4  is  likely  to 
give  me  a  headache  or  not,  I 


begin  to  suspect  that  you  now  intend  to 
set  my  brain  buzzing  with  ideas  about  the 
Absolute  and  the  Infinite.  And  at  the  end 
of  it  all,  my  Lesser  Socrates,  let  me  fore¬ 
warn  you  that  I  shall  be  no  nearer  to  belief 
in  a  God.  For  I  simply  hate  your  tran¬ 
scendental  philosophies.’ ’ 

“  You  are  thinking  as  a  politician, 
Rupert.  You  are  determined  to  vote  with 
your  party,  whatever  the  arguments  on 
the  other  side.  But  in  this  case,  believe 
me,  it  is  wise  to  cast  your  vote  on  the  side 
of  truth,  for  to  find  yourself  here  in  the 
wrong  lobby  is  not  to  muddle  other  peo¬ 
ple’s  lives  but  your  own.  Life  must  be  a 
muddle  till  people  know  why  they  are  ex¬ 
isting.  At  the  present  moment  the  world 
is  as  badly  organized  as  would  be  the 
handiwork  of  a  woman  to  whom  someone 
has  tossed  needles,  cloth,  and  cotton,  but 
no  pattern  and  no  instructions.  Men  do 


29 


30 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


not  know  what  they  are  making.  They  do 
not  know  why  they  are  living.  How  can 
yon  have  order  without  purpose,  how  can 
you  have  creative  righteousness  without  a 
destiny?  Do  you  think,  for  instance,  that 
you  would  solve  your  political  difficulties 
by  reaching  any  such  Utopia  as  I  hear 
hearty  democrats  singing  of  in  the  jingle — 


Eight  hours’  work, 

Eight  hours’  play. 

Eight  hours’  sleep, 

And  eight  bob  a  day? 

If  you  think  that,  Rupert,  let  me  take  you 
through  the  suburbs  of  London,  through 
the  suburbs  of  provincial  towns,  through 
model  villages  and  through  Garden  Cities, 
and  demand  of  you  if  this  is  the  end  of 
evolution,  the  final  reach  of  the  human 
race.” 

“  Time  is  passing,’ ’  he  said,  taking  out 
his  watch;  “  you  had  something  to  say  to 
me  about  a  second  argument  for  believing 
in  God.  I  hate  democracy — and  particu¬ 
larly  democracy  in  a  model  village.  Let 
us  try  to  forget  it.  There  are  more  gentle¬ 
men  in  the  Arabian  Desert  and  the  plains 
of  India  than  in  Oldham  or  Sheffield.” 

4  4  My  second  argument,  Rupert,  will  con¬ 
vince  you  that  there  is  not  only  a  Life- 
Giver  but  a  Law-Giver,  that  is  to  say,  that 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  31 

God  is  not  an  unknown  Something,  but  a 
Knowable  Intelligence. ’  ’ 

“  I  am  ready  to  be  persuaded.’’ 

“  My  first  argument  proved  from  sci¬ 
ence  that  protoplasm  as  we  know  it  could 
not  have  existed  in  the  nebula  or  on  this 
planet  in  its  earliest  aeons.  My  second 
argument  is  such  a  strong  one  that  it  can 
even  accept  that  theory  your  rire  of  the 
great  Lord  Kelvin,  who  would  have  us 
believe  in  a  shower  of  meteoric  dust.  For 
you  will  see,  Rupert,  that  the  shower  of 
meteoric  dust,  if  it  fell  to  the  earth,  came 
from  somewhere  else,  and  must  have  come, 
as  Jupiter  is  said  to  have  come,  in  a 
shower  of  gold  to  the  arms  of  Danae, — that 
is  to  say,  it  must  have  come  with  the  pur¬ 
pose  and  the  impregnating  power  of  a 
Divine  Intelligence.” 

“  I  do  not  see  that  at  all.” 

“  Well,  I  will  ask  you  a  few  questions. 
When  you  look  upon  the  earth,  do  you  see 
there  order  or  chaos?  ” 

“  Some  sort  of  order.” 

“  So  that  the  shower  of  meteoric  dust, 
and  the  chemical  elements  of  the  original 
Life  Substance,  had  in  them  a  definite 
motion  away  from  what  we  are  obliged  to 
call  chaos  and  towards  what  seems  to  us 
like  order?  ” 

“  Yes.” 


32 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


“  So  that  evolution  began  with  a  move¬ 
ment  the  aim  of  which  was  towards 
intelligence?  ” 

“  That  appears  to  be  the  case.” 

“  Science  teaches  us,  Rupert,  and  quite 
dogmatically,  that  the  movement  of  evolu¬ 
tion  is  from  the  simple  to  the  complex.  In 
the  elements  of  matter  it  is  impossible  to 
discover,  even  with  the  most  powerful 
microscope,  the  smallest  semblance  of  voli¬ 
tion  or  self-determining  power.  The  con¬ 
stituents  of  protoplasm  are  passive;  as 
protoplasm  they  become  active.  The  ele¬ 
ments  of  protoplasm  were  assembled  to¬ 
gether — by  whom?  The  elements  were 
assembled,  tiny  cells  resulted,  Life  began. 
And  from  these  humble  forms,  evolution 
has  built  up  structures  so  wonderful  and 
so  beautiful  as  the  bodies  of  the  gazelle, 
the  thrush,  the  tiger,  the  bee,  and  Man. 
The  invisible  thing  which  enters  proto¬ 
plasm  at  a  pin’s  point,  thrusts  itself  into 
the  possession  of  hands,  feet,  eyes,  ears: 
creates  for  itself  the  power  to  attend,  the 
power  to  reflect. 

11  Evolution,  then,  is  another  word  for 
organization.  Evolution  first  of  all  organ¬ 
ized  your  inert  matter,  your  mere  chem¬ 
ical  elements,  and  formed  protoplasm; 
then  evolution  gave  to  protoplasm  a  thou¬ 
sand  forms,  a  thousand  directions;  evo- 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


33 


lution,  in  fact,  lias  played  a  part  very  like 
the  action  of  a  creative  God.  It  has  forced 
matter  to  do  its  will.  From  chemical  ele¬ 
ments  it  has  formed  living  matter:  from 
living  matter  it  has  created  mind.  Stop  a 
moment.  Let  us  be  sure  that  we  under¬ 
stand  this  word  Evolution.  Remember,  to 
begin  with,  that  language  is  symbolism. 
Words  are  only  signs.  The  word  song  is 
not  music:  the  word  love  is  not  feeling: 
the  word  pain  is  not  sensation.  Evolution 
is  a  word  which  has  become  fashionable; 
it  has  assumed  the  portentous  character 
of  an  infallible  diagnosis.  But,  Rupert, 
no  word  is  exact,  no  term  is  infallible ;  all 
language  is  poetry,  the  speech  even  of  a 
man  of  science  is  symbolical.  Do  you  know 
that  while  modern  science  refuses  to  use 
such  terms  as  God  or  even  Efficient  Cause, 
it  is  driven  to  use  such  words  as  Nature 
and  the  Universe,  of  which  no  definition 
can  be  given,  concerning  which  not  one 
single  scientific  statement  can  be  made? 

“  This  word  Evolution  is  the  most  in¬ 
exact,  most  fallible,  and  most  poetic  of  all 
the  terms  in  science.  It  is  something 
thrown  out  by  man  at  a  mystery  which  he 
just  perceives  to  be  at  work  in  the  uni¬ 
verse.  It  is  not  the  thing  itself,  but  a  sign 
for  that  thing.  It  is  no  more  expressive 
or  explanatory  of  the  mystery  than  the 


S4s 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


more  beautiful  word  Skylark  is  expressive 
or  explanatory  of  the  bird  which  sings  to 
us  from  the  clouds.  It  is  no  more  the 
mystery  it  denominates  than  the  label  on 
a  rose-tree  is  the  rose  or  the  leaf  of  the 
rose-tree.  Evolution  is  a  name.  It  tells 
us  nothing  more  of  growth  than  the  word 
motion  tells  us  of  a  steam-engine.” 

“  I  see  at  what  you  are  driving;  but,  in 
spite  of  your  eagerness  to  get  me  into  the 
region  of  poetry,  where  I  should  be  very 
little  at  my  ease,  I  know  that  when  a  man 
speaks  of  a  steam-engine  he  means  an 
engine  driven  by  steam,  and  that  when  a 
man  speaks  of  evolution  he  means  develop¬ 
ment.  The  chicken  evolves  from  the  egg. 
The  fact  is  plain.” 

“  But  the  egg  is  a  mystery.” 

“  All  the  same,  my  philosopher,  the  man 
who  sells  you  cooking  eggs  at  twenty  a 
shilling  is  perfectly  content  to  be  without 
knowledge  of  the  mystery.  All  he  wants 
is  your  shilling  for  his  eggs.” 

“  If  he  tell  me  that  the  visible  universe, 
which  includes  his  eggs,  was  created  by 
God  he  has  some  excuse  for  his  incurious 
contentment;  but  if  he  tell  me,  Rupert,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  God  is  an  exploded 
myth,  and  that  science  knows  all  we  need 
to  know  about  life,  then  I  can  knock  him 
down  with  the  first  of  his  cheap  eggs  which 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


S5 


comes  into  my  hands.  Evolution,  you  ex¬ 
plain  to  me,  is  development;  that  is  to  say, 
it  is  growth.  But  growth  with  direction. 
The  egg  of  a  hen  does  not  hatch  into  a 
lizard,  and  the  eggs  of  the  queen  bee  do 
not  hatch  into  butterflies.  There  is 
growth,  and  there  is  definite  direction. 
Chaos  is  excluded.  Organization  is  pal¬ 
pable.  So  that  this  thing  which  we  call 
Evolution  is  obviously  an  orderly  process, 
a  method  which  has  the  impress  of  a  very 
high  intelligence. 

“  The  egg  of  a  hen,  with  only  three 
weeks  of  heat,  becomes  a  living  organism 
— a  thing  which  moves,  which  looks,  which 
hears,  which  is  conscious  of  fear  and  pleas¬ 
ure.  We  do  away  with  the  hen,  and  sub¬ 
stitute  the  incubator.  The  same  miracle 
takes  place.  But  we  cannot  produce  an 
egg.  Benoist  will  make  you  a  delicious 
egg  for  your  luncheon  basket,  but  not  an 
egg  that  will  hatch.  To  you  this  hatching 
of  an  egg  may  seem  a  mechanical  process, 
but  I  assure  you  that  for  the  greatest  of 
men  of  science  the  coming  to  life  of  a 
chicken  is  a  mystery.  Believe  it  is  not  a 
mystery  when  materialists  make  an  egg — 
a  fertile  egg — hatching  out,  let  us  say,  a 
predetermined  Cochin  China  or  Minorca 
chick;  in  the  same  way  we  will  all  believe 
that  animals  have  a  language  when  they 


36 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


write  a  book  to  tell  ns  so.  It  remains,  too, 
an  insoluble  problem  whether  the  egg  came 
before  the  hen  or  the  hen  before  the  egg. 
You  have  that  on  the  authority  of  Oliver 
Lodge.  We  know  nothing  of  origins.  Sci¬ 
ence  knows  nothing  of  origins.  Huxley, 
a  materialist  after  your  own  heart,  and  as 
a  man  of  science  abler  than  Haeckel,  calls 
it  a  well-founded  doctrine  that  life  is  the 
cause  and  not  the  consequence  of  organ¬ 
ization — Life ,  Rupert,  Life — the  mystery 
of  mysteries!  ” 

“  Stop  a  minute,  I  want  to  get  hold  of 

that.  You  say  that  Huxley - ” 

“  Huxley  upheld  the  famous  doctrine  of 
John  Hunter  that  life  is  the  cause  and  not 
the  consequence  of  organization/ 9 
“  I  see  what  he  means.” 

“  He  means,  Rupert,  that  a  man  who 
speaks  of  matter  becoming  life  speaks  like 
a  fool,  that  evolution  has  not  produced  life, 
but  rather  life  has  produced  evolution. 
You  said  to  me  a  moment  ago  that  evo¬ 
lution  has  produced  life,  uttering  a  heresy. 
You  will  now  admit,  since  Huxley  tells  you 
so,  that  life  is  the  cause  of  evolution.  Life 
is  not  a  consequence  of  anything.  It  is  the 
cause  of  everything.” 

“  Yes,  I  can  follow  that.” 
u  So  we  find,  first  of  all,  that  our  proto¬ 
plasm  could  not  have  existed  in  the  nebula 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


37 


nor  on  the  earth  in  its  earliest  ages;  and 
now  we  find  that  the  evolution  of  this  pro¬ 
toplasm  must  have  been  caused  by  life, 
must  have  proceeded  from  life,  must  have 
been  directed  by  life.  Men  can  make  some¬ 
thing  slightly  like  protoplasm  in  their  lab¬ 
oratories;  but  protoplasm  does  not  make 
itself ;  it  had  to  be  made  before  there  was 
a  man  able  to  make  something  even  re¬ 
motely  resembling  it.  We  come,  then,  to 
ask  ourselves  a  question  which  cannot  be 
evaded.  If  life  is  the  cause  of  evolution, 
and  not  a  consequence  of  evolution,  if  life 
could  not  have  existed  on  this  earth  for 
many  aeons  after  its  birth,  but  must  have 
forced  its  way  into  this  earth  at  a  moment 
when  the  earth  was  ready  to  be  fertilized — 
is  it  not  possible  that  our  term  Evolution 
may  be  only  a  scientific  synonym  for  that 
spiritual  Life-Giver  to  whom  the  religious 
in  all  ages  have  given  the  auguster  name 
of  God?  ” 

“  I  am  in  deep  water.  Evolution  a  syn¬ 
onym,  a  kind  of  alias,  for  God!  I  don’t 
follow  you  there.  Evolution  is  a  process. 
God  is  a  Being.” 

“  But  both  are  hypotheses,  and  scientific 
people  use  this  term  of  Evolution  in  the 
same  way  that  religious  people  use  the 
term  of  God.  The  man  of  science  says 
that  Evolution  has  brought  to  their  pres- 


38 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


ent  state  the  complex  forms  which  inhabit 
the  earth.  The  theologian  says  that  no 
process  could  direct  growth,  that  no  proc¬ 
ess  could  from  the  amoeba  produce  the 
complex  structure, — in  a  word,  that  Life 
is  the  cause  of  evolution,  and  that  evolu¬ 
tion  is  Life  in  action.  Well,  Life  in  action 
is  God  expressing  His  power  and  His  will. 
The  philosopher  and  the  poet,  with  the 
modern  man  of  science  inspiring  them,  say 
to  the  old-fashioned  materialist  (forgive 
me,  Rupert,  but  you  are  almost  charm¬ 
ingly  old-fashioned  in  one  or  two  things) 
that  the  term  Evolution  is  only  another 
word  for  growth,  that  growth  is  one  of  the 
profoundest  problems  which  confront  the 
intelligent  mind,  and  that  the  word  Evolu¬ 
tion  no  more  explains  than  the  simple 
word  Growth  the  phenomena  of  living 
forms.  And  the  philosopher  and  the  poet 
say  that  the  question  is  clarified  if  the 
materialist  will  only  perceive  that  his 
magic  term  of  Evolution  is  a  synonym,  and 
nothing  but  a  synonym,  for  that  Energy, 
that  Life,  that  Spirit  which  from  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  history  man  has  recognized  as  the 
source  of  existence.’ 9 

“  Let  me  interrupt  you.  I  have  been 
told  that  physical  science  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  question  of 
whether  there  is  a  God  or  not.  It  concerns 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


39 


itself  with  visible  phenomena  and  the  be¬ 
haviour  of  things.  It  decides  neither  one 
way  nor  the  other  whether  behind  the  visi¬ 
ble  appearance  there  is  a  spiritual  Reality. 
But  you  speak  to  me  as  if  physical  science 
had  proved  the  existence  of  a  God.  I  think 
there  must  be  something  very  loose  in  your 
dialectic.  ’ ’ 

“  Oh,  but,  Rupert,  we  agreed  that  this 
should  be  a  conversation,  that  long  words 
should  be  avoided,  and  that  there  should 
be  no  casuistry.  Don’t  saddle  me  with  a 
dialectic.  We  are  simple  men  of  moderate 
education,  free  from  the  pedantry  of  the 
schools,  and  rightfully  employing  lan¬ 
guage  as  it  is  used  for  every  other  purpose 
in  life;  and  we  are  asking  ourselves 
whether  physical  science,  as  a  few  mate¬ 
rialists  imagine,  does  away  with  the  need 
of  a  divine  hypothesis.  It  is  a  question 
which  may  be  decided,  so  far  as  common 
mortality  can  apprehend  it  at  all,  without 
dialectics  and  without  polysyllables.” 

“  But  are  you  not  wrong  in  supposing 
that  physical  science  has  anything  at  all  to 
do  with  the  matter!  That  is  my  point/ ’ 

“  You  are  running  away  from  your  first 
position;  but  I  am  glad  to  answer  so  sur¬ 
rendering  a  question.  I  will  answer  it  in 
this  way.  Science  works  apart  from  re¬ 
ligion,  but  religion  includes  science.  Sci- 


40 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


ence  cannot  give  ns  God;  but  it  can  give 
ns,  and  in  my  opinion  does  overwhelm¬ 
ingly  give  ns,  reasons  for  trusting  onr 
intuitional  sense  of  God.  There  is  nothing 
outside  the  domain  of  religion.  Religion 
is  God,  and  God  is  in  the  Universe — per¬ 
haps  is  the  Universe.  Yon  cannot  examine 
a  seed  or  a  bird’s  feather  or  a  molecule 
without  laying  your  hands  upon  the  things 
of  God.  When  men  of  science  profess  that 
they  have  nothing  to  do  with  theology,  they 
are  in  the  position  of  a  doctor  examining  a 
man’s  heart  who  declares  that  he  is  not 
concerned  with  the  man’s  life  within  his 
body.  The  man  of  science,  protest  he 
never  so  scholastically,  is  engaged  in  the 
study  of  this  physical  universe,  and  from 
what  he  finds  there  a  great  multitude 
which  sits  outside  will  and  does  conclude 
that  Intelligence  is  either  a  necessary  or 
an  unnecessary  hypothesis  of  existence. 
The  man  of  science,  by  his  discoveries, 
helps  us  all  to  know  the  character  of  our 
environment,  and  man’s  environment  is 
either  a  fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms  or 
a  concourse  of  atoms  with  the  will  of  God 
behind  it  and  in  it.1  The  man  of  science 
may  not  be  concerned  to  decide  these  alter- 

i  “  Nature  not'  only  provides  the  scenery  and  prop¬ 
erties  of  history,  but  the  actors  themselves  seem  to  have 
sprung  from  its  soil.” — The  Realm  of  Ends.  By  James 
Ward. 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


41 


natives,  but  every  single  discovery  lie 
makes  must  of  necessity  be  evidence  on 
one  side  or  the  other.  Do  not  let  us  waste 
our  time  in  a  controversy  so  barren  as 
this,  but  proceed  to  the  conclusion  of  my 
second  argument.’ 7 

“  Very  well;  I  am  content  that  you 
should  continue  in  your  own  way,  and  I 
am  happy  to  know  that  the  conclusion  of 
your  argument  is  in  sight.  For  it  continu¬ 
ally  strikes  me,  even  while  I  am  interested 
in  what  you  tell  me,  that  to  sit  here  dis¬ 
cussing  the  hypothesis  of  God  while  the 
country  is  staggering  on  the  edge  of  civil 
war  is  very  much  as  if  a  man  whose  house 
is  afire  should  get  down  a  dictionary  to 
look  up  some  difficult  term  in  metaphys¬ 
ics.’  ’ 

“  But  if  the  dictionary  could  give  him 
power  to  put  out  the  conflagration  he 
would  be  wise  to  consult  it.  Suppose  you 
go  from  me,  convinced  that  this  world  is 
the  creation  of  God,  that  evolution  is  the 
method  of  God  for  bringing  a  superman 
into  existence,  might  you  not  have  some¬ 
thing  in  your  mind  which  would  colour 
what  you  say  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
which  would  tend  to  rescue  political  truth 
from  the  rabble  jealousies  and  self-inter¬ 
ests  of  faction?  ” 

“  I  would  not  go  so  far  as  that;  but  I  am 


42 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


prepared  to  be  convinced  of  God’s  exist¬ 
ence,  if  yon  can  prove  it  to  me.  I  rec¬ 
ognize,  I  assure  you,  tbat  an  atheistical 
democracy  is  fatal  to  the  social  order.” 

“  Well,  you  are  so  far  persuaded  that 
you  can  agree  with  me  as  to  the  unthink¬ 
ableness  of  any  theory  which  attempts  to 
originate  life  with  this  flaming  planet. 
Life  came  to  the  earth,  pushed  its  way  into 
the  earth,  and  everything  which  science 
has  discovered  tends  to  an  absolute  con¬ 
viction  that  life  proceeds  from  life.  Here, 
then,  is  a  step  towards  a  Life-Giver.  The 
Life  Substance  is  accepted ;  but  behind  the 
Life  Substance  must  have  been  a  Life- 
Giver.  ’  ’ 

“  I  do  not  see  that.” 

‘ 4  But  do  you  not  agree  with  Huxley  that 
life  came  before  and  not  after  evolution?  ” 

“  This  Life  Substance  may  have  been 
the  self-existing  matter  of  the  universe. 
It  may  have  been  the  absolute  beginning 
of  things.  You  can  no  more  prove  to  me 
that  this  Life  Substance  needs  a  Life-Giver 
than  you  can  explain  to  me  how  God  ex¬ 
isted  without  a  beginning.” 

“  You  go  too  fast  for  me.  I  ask  you  to 
observe  in  the  chemical  constituents  of 
your  Life  Substance  a  complete  absence 
of  power  or  volition.  They  are  not  living 
things.  They  themselves  become  the  Life 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


43 


Substance  only  when  assembled  and  com¬ 
pounded.  Left  to  themselves  they  would 
have  continued  to  be  what  they  were.  But 
they  became !  Something  moved  these 
atoms  of  carbon,  oxygen,  hydrogen,  and 
nitrogen;  something  combined  them  into 
complex  molecules.  Science  says,  Evolu¬ 
tion.  Poetry  says,  The  spirit  of  God 
moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters.  For 
us,  who  are  neither  men  of  science  nor 
poets,  it  is  enough  that  something  assem¬ 
bled  the  non-living  elements,  something 
began  to  act,  something  began  to  ferment 
there.  Now,  whatever  this  something 
really  was,  we  are  face  to  face  with  an¬ 
other  mystery  of  origin.  The  dead  Matter 
of  the  materialist  moved.  Whence  came 
that  movement?  Do  you  answer  that  it 
was  accident,  or  do  you  reply  that  the 
origin  of  motion  is  an  inscrutable  mystery! 

“  I  ask  you  if  either  of  those  answers 
really  satisfies  your  mind  when  you  per¬ 
ceive  what  is  obvious,  plain,  and  quite  im¬ 
possible  to  avoid,  to  wit,  that  this  motion 
acts  with  intelligence  and  produces  from 
passive  specks  of  matter  first  an  atom, 
then  a  knot  of  atoms,  and  afterwards 
bodies  so  marvellously  complex  and  fur¬ 
nished  with  organs  so  miraculously 
adapted  to  their  environment,  that  only  a 
fool  or  a  pedant  could  refuse  to  see  Pur- 


44 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


pose  and  Object  in  the  process?  Do  you 
say  that  accident  assembled  the  elements 
of  protoplasm  together,  and  that  accident 
set  protoplasm  in  motion? — I  ask  you, 
then,  why  nature  is  not  a  cataclysm?  Why 
is  it  the  solar  system  is  not  jumping  about 
— afflicted  with  St.  Vitus’  dance?  Do  you 
say  that  the  origin  of  motion  is  an  inscru¬ 
table  mystery — I  ask  you  whether  you  do 
not  at  least  recognize  in  that  motion  the 
qualities  of  intelligence — intelligence  pur¬ 
suing  a  purpose?  Will  you  answer  my 
questions,  Rupert,  or  will  you  leave 
them?  ” 

“  Quite  frankly  I  confess  that  the  ap¬ 
pearance  of  order  and  purpose  in  the 
world  is  an  argument  in  favour  of  Mind — 
some  form  of  mind.  But  the  character  and 
nature  of  that  Mind  no  man  can  deter¬ 
mine.” 

‘ ‘  I  am  going  to  give  you  a  word,  Rupert, 
which  is  poetry,  science,  and  religion,  all 
three  in  three  syllables ;  I  want  you  to  hold 
this  word  before  your  attention,  to  brood 
upon  it  in  the  deeps  of  your  consciousness, 
and  to  make  it  henceforth  the  very  heart 
and  soul  of  your  philosophy.  This  word 
is  the  word  Direction.  Whenever  you  are 
inclined  to  mount  the  horse  of  Evolution 
and  ride  away  from  exact  thinking,  first 
of  all  saddle  him  and  bridle  him  with  the 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


45 


thought  of  Direction .  Evolution  is  a  dan¬ 
gerously  loose  term, — it  may  mean  to  one 
man  the  sublime  and  beautiful  method  of 
God,  to  another  the  meaningless  function 
of  a  blind  and  purposeless  energy.  But 
Direction  pulls  a  man  up.  There  is  direc¬ 
tion  in  nature, — all  nature  is  governed  and 
controlled  by  direction.  Things  are  what 
they  are,  not  at  the  hazard  of  cataclysm 
and  chaos,  but  at  the  will  of  direction. 
There  is  ‘  a  rigorous  concatenation. ’  The 
something  which  moves — although  it  is  not 
actually  a  God  who  cannot  err — has  intel¬ 
ligence.  The  movement  itself  has  direc¬ 
tion.  The  direction  itself  is  environed  by 
the  rigorous  concatenation  of  the  universe. 
Astronomers  can  foretell  eclipses  and  can 
postulate  the  existence  of  invisible  stars, 
because  the  universe  is  orderly,  because 
the  machinery  of  the  cosmos  is  set  in 
definite  motion.  The  sower  can  go  forth 
sowing  because  the  earth  is  not  a  buck¬ 
jumping  ocean.  The  engineer  can  contrive 
appliances  which  minister  to  our  comfort 
because  the  processes  of  material  things 
are  not  the  processes  of  anarchy. 

“  And  by  the  same  token  the  religious 
man  can  pray  to  God  without  superstition 
and  without  a  moment’s  doubt,  because  his 
perceptions  assure  him  that  there  is  a 
purpose  and  an  object  in  all  this  orderly, 


46 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


majestic,  and  most  beautiful  universe. 
Our  intelligence  recognizes  His  Intel¬ 
ligence.  The  child  looks  up  to  its  Father. 
Dare  you  say  that  such  order  as  you  see 
in  the  processes  of  nature  is  the  result  of 
accident  ?  Dare  you  say,  and  this  is  where 
the  materialist  breaks  his  shins  against 
his  own  fence,  that  in  the  long  chain  of 
antecedent  and  sequence,  that  rigorous 
concatenation  which  you  call  evolution, 
there  is  not  positive  intelligence  and  posi¬ 
tive  direction?  Not  intelligence  that  is 
omniscient,  not  direction  that  cannot  take 
a  wrong  turning  (to  this  we  will  come 
later),  but  intelligence  and  direction.  Dare 
you  say  that  the  mind  of  man  does  not  see 
everywhere  a  Mind  that  is  at  least  higher 
than  his  own?  ” 

4 4  No;  I  will  dispute  neither  the  order  in 
the  universe  nor  the  direction  and  intel¬ 
ligence  in  Evolution.  But  all  the  same  I 
cannot  see  that  these  things  are  arguments 
to  prove  the  existence  of  a  God  with  whom 
man  has  any  concern,  any  immortal  busi¬ 
ness.  ’  ’ 

“  That  is  another  question  which  we  will 
discuss  on  another  occasion.  In  the  mean¬ 
time  I  release  you  and  set  you  free  to  illu¬ 
mine  the  House  of  Commons.  For  myself, 
when  I  have  looked  at  a  certain  window  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  I  will  go  to  my  books 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


47 


and  prepare  the  statement  for  which  yon 
have  asked  me.  We  part,  however,  on  the 
good  understanding  that  Life  forced  its 
way  here  from  outside  this  planet  on  which 
we  dwell,  that  the  forms  of  life  which  we 
now  observe  were  evolved  from  unintel¬ 
ligent  matter,  and  that  in  this  evolution 
from  formless  dead  matter  to  complex  liv¬ 
ing  organisms  there  is  abounding  evidence 
of  purpose  and  direction.  Man’s  intel¬ 
ligence  perceives  in  the  universe  an  intel¬ 
ligence  greater  than  his  own.  You  go  as 
far  with  me  as  that?  Well,  we  are  nearer 
to  each  other  than  we  first  thought.  Per¬ 
haps,  my  dear  Rupert,  you  may  yet  find 
yourself  at  the  head  of  that  only  revolu¬ 
tionary  movement  which  can  perfect  and 
preserve  the  fabric  of  society.  Now,  let 
us  walk.  And  you  shall  tell  me  what  it  is 
you  know  as  a  fact — something,  was  it  not, 
about  the  edge  of  civil  war?  Dear  me,  but 
this  is  dreadful.  And  I  understand  it  is  to 
be  a  war  between  two  bodies  of  Christians. 
Peter’s  sword,  then,  is  out  of  its  scabbard 
again.  ’  ’ 


Ill 


LETTER  ONE:  CONCERNING  THE 
BELIEFS  OF  MEN  OF  SCIENCE 

U1\/TY  Dear  Rupert  : 

It  I  “  ^  veiY  clear-witted  and 

honest-minded  man  of  science, 
Sir  James  Geikie,  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of 
Science  at  Edinburgh  University,  once 
made  the  following  reply  to  a  question  con¬ 
cerning  the  faith  of  scientific  men 

1  It  is  simply  an  impertinence  to  say 
that  the  “  leading  scientists  are  irre¬ 
ligious  or  anti-Christian.”  Such  a 
statement  could  only  be  made  by  some 
scatter-brained  chatterbox  or  zealous 
fanatic. ’ 

“  You  are  the  unconscious  victim,  be¬ 
lieve  me,  my  dear  Rupert,  of  a  loose  idea 
which  has  been  floating  about  the  world 
ever  since  the  theories  of  Laplace,  Dar¬ 
win,  and  Haeckel  got  themselves  into  the 
heads  of  a  few  scatter-brained  4  rational¬ 
ists  ’  and  set  their  noisy  tongues  wagging 
to  the  rag-time  music  of  atheism.  You 

48 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


49 


believe  that  science  has  done  away  with 
the  necessity  of  a  God.  You  accept,  with¬ 
out  a  moment’s  questioning,  the  Life  Sub¬ 
stance  posited  by  Haeckel:  you  embrace 
the  term  evolution  without  stopping  to  con¬ 
sider  that  it  is  but  a  word :  and  you  glibly 
account  to  yourself  for  all  the  beautiful 
and  marvellous  things  in  nature  by  the 
tremendously  significant  phrase  4  struggle 
for  existence,’  without  a  moment’s  scep¬ 
ticism  as  to  its  limitations.  And  you  are 
thus  minded  to  accept  these  conclusions, 
thus  disposed  to  do  away  with  God,  not  so 
much  because  the  arguments  of  rational¬ 
ists  convince  you,  not  so  much  because  you 
have  thought  the  matter  out  for  yourself, 
as  because  you  are  persuaded  that  men  of 
science  have  abandoned  what  you  consider 
to  be  the  superstitions  of  religion.  That 
is  the  bee  in  your  bonnet. 

“  When  we  sat  under  the  trees  of  St. 
James’s  Park  this  morning,  with  the  stir 
and  movement  of  life  surrounding  us,  the 
encouraging  breath  of  Spring  in  our  faces, 
the  pleasant  warmth  of  the  sun  quietly 
cheering  our  human  minds  and  blessing 
the  earth  about  us  with  the  welcome  of 
resurrection,  I  was  conscious  throughout 
our  conversation  that  all  my  appeals  to 
your  reason  suffered  in  their  cogency  and 
conviction  because  of  the  unsympathy  and 


50 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


the  antagonism  in  yonr  mind,  planted 
there  by  the  erring  prejudice  that  men  of 
science  are  materialists,  agnostics,  and 
atheists.  You  would  have  been  still  harder 
to  convert  if  we  had  held  our  discussion 
on  a  dark,  lugubrious,  Carlylean  day  in  the 
shadows  of  a  morose  library:  but  even 
with  the  glamour  of  the  open  air,  even  with 
the  beauty  and  constancy  and  affectionate 
charm  of  nature  visible  to  your  eyes  and 
felt  in  all  the  motions  of  your  mind,  still 
did  this  erroneous  and  most  fallacious 
prejudgment  make  a  barrier  between  my 
arguments  and  your  persuasion. 

“  I  am  writing  to  you,  then,  in  the  hope 
of  destroying  utterly  and  for  ever  this 
false  impression  which  holds  you  a  stub¬ 
born  prisoner  within  the  walls  of  material¬ 
ism.  I  want  you  to  come  out  into  the  open 
and  see  existence  with  the  eyes  of  rever¬ 
ence,  worship,  and  thanksgiving.  But,  for 
myself,  let  me  tell  you,  it  would  not  weigh 
a  feather  in  my  judgment  if  every  man  of 
science  in  Europe  and  America  were 
aligned  with  the  grim  forces  of  the  Ra¬ 
tionalist  Press  Association,  thundering 
under  the  generalship  of  Mr.  Joseph 
McCabe  against  the  notion  that  any  being 
inhabits  this  vast  universe  higher,  more 
powerful,  and  more  immortal  than  Mr. 
J oseph  McCabe.  I  pay  as  much  reverence 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


51 


to  poets  and  saints  as  to  chemists  and 
biologists.  I  am  thoroughly  sure  that  the 
intuition  of  Shakespeare  gives  men  a  much 
truer  conception  of  life  than  the  most  care¬ 
ful  attempt  to  make  a  harmony,  a  syn¬ 
thesis,  of  all  the  departmental  sciences. 
But  I  am  well  enough  acquainted  with  the 
impatience  and  the  speed  of  modern  exist¬ 
ence  to  know  that  multitudes  of  people 
expect  others  to  do  their  thinking  for  them, 
and  that  a  great  name  in  science  has  now  a 
mightier  value  with  the  mob  of  all  classes 
than  has  the  voice  of  the  Pope  for  the 
hearts  of  the  faithful. 

“  Well,  let  us  see,  Rupert,  how  many 
masters  of  science  can  be  pressed  into  the 
service  of  atheism. 

“  Sir  William  Crookes,  one  of  the  very 
greatest  chemists  in  the  world,  a  man  who 
knows  infinitely  more  about  matter  than 
Haeckel,  writing  to  me  only  the  other  day, 
said:  4  I  cannot  imagine  the  possibility 
of  anyone  with  ordinary  intelligence  enter¬ 
taining  the  least  doubt  as  to  the  existence 
of  a  God — a  Law-Giver  and  a  Life-Giver.’ 
What  can  you  say  in  answer  to  this,  you 
who  are  not  a  chemist,  you  who  only  accept 
what  you  hear  other  amateurs  say  about 
science?  This  great  and  profound  chem¬ 
ist,  you  see,  gifted,  too,  with  a  rare  imag¬ 
ination,  cannot  imagine  how  a  man  with 


52 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


ordinary  intelligence  can  entertain  the 
least  doubt  as  to  the  existence  of  a  Law- 
Giver  and  a  Life-Giver. 

“  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  whom  I  shall  qnote 
later  on,  wrote  to  me  on  this  subject  the 
other  day,  saying  that  he  had  not  got  be¬ 
yond  Kant’s  two  main  categories:  4  The 
starry  heavens  ’  and  ‘  The  Moral  Law.’ 
Individual  characteristics  of  the  visible 
world  impress  him,  but  he  says:  ‘  The 
Universe  must  be  taken  as  a  whole;  and 
the  phenomena  of  Mind,  and  the  interac¬ 
tion  of  Life  and  Matter,  seem  to  me  the 
phenomena  which  most  strongly  establish 
intelligence,  guidance,  and  control.’  In 
certain  moods,  some  particular  incident  or 
detail  may  specially  impress  him  with  the 
power  or  the  presence  of  the  Eternal;  but 
this  he  recognizes  as  a  subjective  feeling, 
often  fleeting  and,  though  useful  no  doubt 
when  it  occurs,  hardly  to  be  regarded  as  a 
strong  argument.  But  Lodge  looks  at  the 
Whole,  and  in  the  Whole  finds  Mind.  In¬ 
telligence,  guidance,  and  control — these 
three  witnesses  to  the  power  of  God,  he 
says,  may  be  seen  at  all  times  and  in  all 
places,  enduringly,  whenever  a  man  sur¬ 
veys  the  Universe  as  a  whole  and  re¬ 
flects  upon  the  interaction  of  life  and 
matter. 

“  Professor  J.  H.  Gladstone  once  wrote 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


53 


to  a  newspaper,  saying:  4  I  have  known 
the  British  Association  nnder  forty-one 
different  Presidents — all  leading  men  of 
science,  with  the  exception  of  two  or  three 
appointed  on  different  grounds.  On  look¬ 
ing  over  these  forty-one  different  names, 
I  count  twenty  who,  judged  by  their  public 
utterances  or  private  communications,  are 
men  of  Christian  belief  and  character, 
while,  judged  by  the  same  test,  only  four 
disbelieve  in  any  Divine  revelation.  Of 
the  remaining  seventeen,  some  have  pos¬ 
sibly  been  religious  men,  and  others  may 
have  been  opponents/ 

44  Sir  George  Stokes,  who,  you  must 
know,  my  dear  Rupert,  was  one  of  the  very 
few  complete  men  of  science,  4  the  Sir 
Isaac  Newton  of  to-day,’  and  in  all  other 
respects  a  very  prince  of  men,  laid  it  down 
as  his  belief  that  sceptics  among  scientific 
men  4  form  a  very  small  minority /  He 
also  said,  4  I  know  of  no  sound  conclusions 
of  science  that  are  opposed  to  the  Chris¬ 
tian  religion.’  Faraday,  Clerk  Maxwell, 
and  Adams,  the  discoverer  of  Neptune, 
4  were  all  deeply  religious,  Christian  men.’ 
Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Sir  William  Flower,  and 
Professors  Owen,  Hooker,  Mivart,  Roma¬ 
nes,  were  religious  men. 

44  But  what  will  you  say,  Rupert, — will 
it,  I  wonder,  take  your  breath  away! — 


54 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


when  yon  learn  that  Lord  Kelvin,  the 
4  Napoleon  of  Science/  gives  it  as  his  con¬ 
viction  that  4  true  Religion  and  true  Sci¬ 
ence  harmonize  perfectly Kelvin  not 
only  believed  in  God;  he  was  a  Christian. 
He  once  asked,  Is  there  anything  so  absurd 
4  as  to  believe  that  a  number  of  atoms,  by 
falling  together  of  their  own  accord,  could 
make  a  sprig  of  moss,  a  microbe,  a  living 
animal!  ’  Scientific  thought,  he  said,  4  is 
compelled  to  accept  the  idea  of  creative 
power.  ’  And  he  told  of  a  country  walk 
with  Liebig,  when  he  asked  that  great 
chemist  if  he  believed  that  the  grass  and 
flowers  they  saw  about  them  grew  by  mere 
mechanical  forces.  To  which  question  of 
Kelvin’s  Liebig  replied:  4  No;  no  more 
than  I  could  believe  that  a  book  of  botany 
describing  them  could  grow  by  mere  chem¬ 
ical  force.’1  Then  we  have  the  immortal 
Lister,  one  of  the  greatest  benefactors  of 
the  human  race,  and  one  of  the  greatest 
men  who  ever  lived,  declaring  that  there 
4  is  no  antagonism  between  the  Religion  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  any  fact  scientifically 
established.’ 

44  Max  Muller  said  in  an  article  entitled, 
4  Why  I  am  not  an  Agnostic  ’ : — 

1  The  Times,  May  4th,  1903. 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


55 


‘  I  cannot  help  discovering  in  the  uni¬ 
verse  an  all-pervading  causality  or  a 
reason  for  everything ;  for,  even  when  in 
my  phenomenal  ignorance  I  do  not  yet 
know  a  reason  for  this  or  that,  I  am 
forced  to  admit  that  there  exists  some 
such  reason ;  I  feel  bound  to  admit  it,  be¬ 
cause  to  a  mind  like  ours  nothing  can 
exist  without  a  sufficient  reason.  But 
how  do  I  know  that?  Here  is  the  point 
where  I  cease  to  be  an  Agnostic.  I  do 
not  know  it  from  experience,  and  yet  I 
know  it  with  a  certainty  greater  than 
any  which  experience  could  give.  If  any 
philosopher  can  persuade  himself  that 
the  true  and  well-ordered  genera  of 
nature  are  the  result  of  mechanical 
forces,  whatever  name  he  may  give  them, 
he  moves  in  a  world  altogether  different 
from  my  own  ...  As  Christians,  we 
have  to  say,  in  the  language  of  St.  John 
and  his  Platonic  and  Gnostic  predeces¬ 
sors,  “  In  the  beginning  there  was 
Logos ”  ’ 

“  Sir  W.  Thistleton  Dyer  said  in 
Nature: — 

‘  I  do  not  see  even  the  beginning  of  a 
materialistic  theory  of  protoplasm 

“  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  who  is  certainly  a 
prince  among  physicists,  concluded  a  lec- 


56 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


tnre  on  the  Tendency  of  Modern  Science 
with  these  words : — 

‘  If  I  have  made  myself  at  all  clear 
...  let  me  summarize  briefly  and 
rather  crudely,  and  say  from  the  scien¬ 
tific  point  of  view,  that  the  tendency  of 
science,  whatever  it  is,  is  not  in  an  irre¬ 
ligious  direction  at  the  present  time,  that 
the  realization  of  the  unity  of  the  cosmic 
scheme  tends  to  faith,  and  not  to  unbelief 
or  unfaith.  We  are  beginning  to  realize 
that  the  whole  scheme,  so  magnificent,  so 
enormous,  so  immense  .  .  .  demands,  in 
some  only  half-intelligible  but  real  sense, 
an  organiser,  a  manager,  a  controller, 
accessible  to  prayer,  able  and  willing  to 
help,  in  His  own  way  and  in  His  own 
time,  but  still  always  able  and  willing: 
not  less,  certainly  not  less,  than  we  are.’ 

“  Sir  Archibald  Geikie  says  in  Elemen¬ 
tary  Lessons  in  Physical  Geography :  —  . . 

‘  One  grand  object  of  science  is  to  link 
the  present  with  the  past,  to  show  how 
the  condition  of  the  globe  to-day  is  the 
result  of  former  changes,  to  trace  the 
progress  of  the  continents  back  through 
long  ages  to  their  earliest  beginnings,  to 
connect  the  abundant  life  now  teeming  in 
air,  on  land,  and  in  the  sea  with  earlier 
forms  long  since  extinct,  but  which  all 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


57 


bore  their  part  in  the  grand  onward 
march  of  life,  now  headed  by  man;  and 
thus,  learning  ever  more  and  more  of 
that  marvellous  plan  after  which  this 
world  has  been  framed,  to  gain  a  deeper 
insight  into  the  harmony  and  beauty  of 
creation,  with  a  yet  profounder  rever¬ 
ence  for  Him  who  made  and  who  up¬ 
holds  it  all.’ 

“  Sir  Robert  Ball,  addressing  the  Vic¬ 
toria  Institute,  said: — 

‘  ...  we  have  ever  brought  before  us 
the  fact  that  there  are  innumerable  mys¬ 
teries  in  nature  which  can  never  be  ac¬ 
counted  for  by  the  operations  with  which 
science  makes  us  familiar,  but  which  de¬ 
mand  the  intervention  of  some  Higher 
Power  than  anything  man ’s  intellect  can 
comprehend.  ’ 

“  Professors  Thomson  and  Geddes  say 
in  Ideals  of  Science  and  Faith: — 

‘  ...  we  are  thus  beginning  to  see,  as 
a  passing  scene,  a  phase  of  a  large 
drama,  of  which  man  is  but  an  awaken¬ 
ing  spectator — a  stumbling  actor — that 
of  the  birth,  the  struggle,  the  death,  yet 
the  renewal  and  ascent  of  the  Ideal  of 
Evolution.  Thus  biological  science 
must  indeed  become  the  handmaid  of  re¬ 
ligion  .  .  .’ 


58 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


“  Professor  C.  Lloyd  Morgan  says  in 
The  Interpretation  of  Nature: — 

‘  .  .  .  a  belief  in  purpose  as  the  causal 
reality  of  which  Nature  is  an  expression 
is  not  inconsistent  with  a  full  and  whole¬ 
hearted  acceptance  of  the  explanations 
of  naturalism,  within  their  appropriate 
sphere  ...  it  is  not  impossible  to  bring 
these  views  into  harmony,  if  we  accept 
the  postulate  that  determining  purpose 
is  the  reality  which  underlies  the  deter¬ 
minate  course  of  phenomena.’ 

“  Sir  Edward  Brabrook,  the  anthropol¬ 
ogist,  said  in  a  British  Association  ad¬ 
dress  : — 

‘  If  it  be  true  that  the  order  of  the 
Universe  is  expressed  in  continuity  and 
not  in  cataclysm,  we  shall  find  the  same 
slow  but  sure  progress  evident  in  each 
branch  of  inquiry.  .  .  .  This  principle 
has,  as  I  understand,  been  fully  accepted 
in  geology  and  biology,  and  throughout 
the  domain  of  physical  science — what 
should  hinder  its  application  to  Anthro¬ 
pology?  It  supplies  a  formula  of  uni¬ 
versal  validity,  and  cannot  but  add  force 
and  sublimity  to  our  imagination  of  the 
wisdom  of  the  Creator.  It  is  little  more 
than  has  been  expressed  in  the  familiar 
words  of  Tennyson: — 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


59 


Yet  I  doubt  not  thro’  the  ages  one  in¬ 
creasing  purpose  runs, 

And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened 
wit'h  the  process  of  the  suns, 

and  supports  his  claim  to  be  44  the  heir 
of  all  the  ages,  in  the  foremost  files  of 
time.”  ’ 

44  Now  I  would  ask  you,  before  you  come 
to  any  opinion  on  these  quotations,  to  con¬ 
sider  the  following  extracts  which  are 
taken  from  a  book  called  The  Old  Riddle 
and  the  Newest  Answer ,  by  John  Ger¬ 
ard,1 — a  book  which  very  effectually  con¬ 
verts  into  thin  air  the  imposing  thesis  of 
Haeckel, — that  thesis  of  which  the  biolo¬ 
gist,  Frank  Cavers,  has  said  that  it  is  4  the 
laughing-stock  of  modern  philosophers/ 
You  will  find  in  these  extracts  not  only 
further  reasons  for  believing  that  science 
is  not  on  the  side  of  atheism,  but  sound 
reasons  for  believing  in  God : — 

4  That  the  Cosmos  in  which  we  dwell, 
the  world  of  law,  order,  and  life,  has  not 
existed  for  ever,  we  saw  to  be  a  truth 
enforced  by  the  researches  of  physical 
Science,  no  less  than  by  the  clear  teach¬ 
ing  of  reason.  It  certainly  had  a  be¬ 
ginning,  and  there  must  be  a  cause  to 
which  that  beginning  is  due, — a  cause 

1  Longmans  &  Co. 


60 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


capable  of  producing  all  which  we  find 
to  have  been  actually  produced.  The 
material  Universe  and  the  mechanism  of 
the  heavens, — organic  life  with  all  its 
infinite  marvels  and  varieties — animal 
sensation — human  intelligence — canons 
of  beauty,  the  law  of  good  and  evil — all 
these  must  have  existed  potentially  in 
the  First  Cause,  as  in  the  Source  whence 
alone  they  could  be  derived. 

6  Of  Chance,  enough  has  already  been 
said.  It  is,  however,  worth  our  while  to 
observe  how  constantly  to  the  last  Mr. 
Darwin  was  haunted  by  the  conscious¬ 
ness  that  this  was  in  reality  the  factor 
upon  which  his  system  must  depend,  and 
that  it  could  not  possibly  account  for 
much  that  he  came  across  in  nature.  If, 
as  he  confessed,  the  sight  of  a  peacock’s 
tail-feather  made  him  sick,  it  was  just 
because  its  elaborate  beauty,  to  which  no 
commensurate  advantage  can  be  sup¬ 
posed  to  attach,  forbade  the  notion  that 
his  theory  could  account  for  it.  So,  of 
another  still  more  marvellous  instance 
in  which  Nature  exhibits  artistic  power, 
namely  the  ball-and-socket  ornament  on 
the  wings  of  the  Argus  pheasant,  he 
writes : — 

1  “  No  one,  I  presume,  will  attribute 
this  shading,  which  has  excited  the  ad¬ 
miration  of  many  experienced  artists,  to 
chance,  to  the  fortuitous  concourse  of 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


61 


atoms  of  colouring  matter.  That  these 
ornaments  should  have  been  formed 
through  the  selection  of  many  successive 
variations,  not  one  of  which  was  origi¬ 
nally  intended  to  produce  the  ball-and- 
socket  effect,  seems  as  incredible  as  that 
one  of  Raphael’s  Madonnas  should  have 
been  formed  by  the  selection  of  chance 
daubs  of  paints  made  by  a  long  succes¬ 
sion  of  young  artists,  not  one  of  whom 
intended  at  first  to  draw  the  human 
figure. 

4  44  That  the  Universe  has  a  cause  is 
no  less  certain  than  that  the  Universe 
exists,  for  of  that  cause  it  is  the  monu¬ 
ment.  .  .  .  From  such  conclusions  there 
is  no  escape;  and  since  it  is  impossible 
to  find  the  cause  required  within  the 
world  of  material  forces  and  sensible 
phenomena,  it  becomes  no  less  obvious 
that  it  must  be  beyond,  across  the  fron¬ 
tier  which  nothing  material  can  pass. 

4  4  4  Therefore,  also,  we  know  something 
concerning  that  Cause, — very  little,  per¬ 
haps,  in  comparison  with  what  we  can¬ 
not  know, — but  still  something  very  sub¬ 
stantial.  We  know  that  such  a  Cause 
exists.  We  know  that  it  must  possess 
every  excellence  which  we  discover  in 
Nature, — all  that  she  has,  and  more; 
since  what  she  derives  from  it,  the  Cause 
of  Nature  has  of  itself.  In  it  must  be  all 
power,  for  except  as  flowing  from  it 


62 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


there  is  no  power  possible.  Finally,  as 
a  capable  Cause  of  law  and  order  in 
Nature,  and  of  Intellect  and  Will  in  Man, 
the  First  Cause  must  be  super-eminently 
endowed  with  Understanding,  and  Free¬ 
dom  in  the  exercise  of  its  might, — or  it 
would  be  inferior  to  its  own  works. 

‘  “  So  it  is  that,  as  Professors  Stewart 
and  Tait  have  told  us,  we  must  conceive 
of  Him  as  not  the  Creator  only,  but  like¬ 
wise  the  Upholder  of  all  things,  while 
Lord  Kelvin  declares  we  are  unmistak¬ 
ably  shown  through  Nature  that  she  de¬ 
pends  upon  one  ‘  ever-acting  Creator 
and  Ruler.’ 

‘  “  ...  And  so,  in  the  words  of 
Rivarol,  God  is  the  explanation  of  the 
world,  and  the  world  is  the  demonstra¬ 
tion  of  God.  The  acceptance  of  a  Self- 
existent,  all-powerful,  and  intelligent 
Being  can  alone  serve  as  a  basis  for  any 
system  of  Cosmogony  which  satisfies 
our  intellectual  need  of  causation ;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  nature  of  this 
Being,  as  necessarily  beyond  the  scope 
of  our  senses,  can  be  known  to  us  only 
indirectly  thro’  the  effects  of  which  He 
is  the  cause.’ ’  ’ 

“  I  must  end,  for  it  is  now  evening,  and 
to  write  after  dinner  is  not  good  for  di¬ 
gestion.  When  I  put  down  this  pen,  it  will 
be  to  take  up  some  charming  author  who 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


63 


uses  no  barbarous  nomenclature,  who  is 
not  haunted  by  the  necessity  for  a  mathe¬ 
matical  exactitude  in  expressing  himself, 
and  who  is  friendly,  joyous,  and  full  of  a 
divine  serenity  because  he  recognizes  that 
life  is  happily  more  real  and  more  spacious 
than  our  explanations  of  the  universe. 
But  before  I  so  prepare  myself  for  sleep — 
I  think  it  will  be  Sainte  Beuve,  though  I 
have  a  sudden  inclination  to  the  Letters 
of  FitzGerald, — I  shall  breathe  to  the 
heavens  a  little  wishful  prayer  that  your 
mind,  Rupert,  may  be  cleansed  from  the 
impurity  of  materialism,  and  that  you  may 
yet  come  to  feel  in  the  music  of  Handel  and 
Beethoven  a  beauty  more  full  of  meaning 
for  your  soul  than  you  have  so  far  dis¬ 
covered  in  the  rhetoric  of  front-bench  poli¬ 
ticians  or  in  the  statements  concerning 
men  of  science  made  by  your  scatter¬ 
brained  chatterboxes. 

Your  Friend. 

“  Postscript. — It  is  Sir  Thomas  Browne; 
but  I  feel  that  FitzGerald  will  prove  the 
eventual  night-cap.  Do  you  know  the  Dor- 
mative  of  Sir  Thomas? — 

“  The  night  is  come,  like  to  the  day; 

Depart  not  thou  great  God  away. 

Let  not  my  sins,  black  as  the  night, 

Eclipse  the  lustre  of  thy  light. 

Keep  still  in  my  Horizon,  for  to  me 
The  Sun  makes  not  the  day,  but  thee.  .  .  . 


64? 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


44  He  says  of  this  Dormative,  which  he 
was  wont  to  take  bedward, 4  I  need  no  other 
Laudanum  than  this  to  make  me  sleep; 
after  which  I  close  mine  eyes  in  security, 
content  to  take  my  leave  of  the  Sun,  and 
sleep  unto  the  resurrection. 


O  come  that  hour,  when  I  shall  never 
Sleep  again,  but  wake  for  ever.’ 


4  4  What  a  gracious  gentleman !  9  9 


IV 


CONCERNING  HYPOTHESES 

RUPERT  came  to  see  me  on  the  fol¬ 
lowing  Sunday  afternoon,  bringing 
7  into  my  room  such  a  warm,  fresh 
current  of  brightness  and  pleasure  in  life 
that  I  uttered  a  laudamus  for  an  answer  to 
my  prayer.  But  he  had  hardly  got  seated 
in  the  most  easy  of  my  chairs  before  he 
burst  out  with  an  unprefaced  pronounce¬ 
ment  that  the  opinions  of  men  of  science 
concerning  the  existence  of  God  had  no 
more  value  than  the  opinions  of  butchers 
and  bootmakers  on  any  subject  outside 
their  butchering  and  their  bootmaking.  I 
perceived  by  certain  of  his  terms  that  he 
had  taken  counsel  over  my  letter  with  some 
able  and  distinguished  philosopher,  and 
therefore  waited  with  interest  and  respect 
for  the  tail  of  his  criticism. 

“  Science,  you  must  understand,’ ’  he 
told  me,  “  has  nothing  to  do  with  religion. 
I  warned  you  of  this  the  other  day.  Science 
is  concerned  with  the  visible,  tangible, 
and  sonorous  universe.  And  this  is  what 
— here  he  drew,  somewhat  self-consciously, 

65 


66 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


a  paper  from  his  pocket — Professor  James 
Ward  has  to  say  about  the  matter: — 

‘  What  we  have  to  note  is  the  exist¬ 
ence  in  our  time  of  a  vast  circle  of  em¬ 
pirical  knowledge  in  the  whole  range  of 
which  the  idea  of  a  Necessary  Being  or 
a  First  Cause  has  no  place.  ...  If 
modern  science  had  a  voice  and  were 
questioned  as  to  this  omission  of  all  ref¬ 
erence  to  a  Creator,  it  would  only  reply : 
I  am  not  aware  of  needing  any  such 
hypothesis.’ 

He  goes  on  to  say : — 

1  So  far  as  knowledge  extends  all  is 
law,  and  law  ultimately  and  most  clearly 
to  be  formulated  in  terms  of  matter  and 
motion.  ’ 

Another  very  clever  fellow,  Professor 
Boutroux,  says :  4  En  entrant  dans  son  la- 
boratoire,  le  savant  laissait  a  la  porte  ses 
convictions  religieuses,  pour  les  reprendre 
a  la  sortie.’  He  says  that  science  knows 
nothing  of  religion,  that  she  remains  an 
alien  to  religion.  If  you  want  his  exact 
words  I  have  them  here :  4  La  science,  en 
soi,  n’a  rien  de  religieux,  elle  demeure 
etrangere  a  la  religion.’  So  you  see  that 
science  has  nothing  to  do  with  religion,  and 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  67 

that  it  can  find  no  necessity  in  nature  for 
the  existence  of  God.” 

“  We  must  think  this  over,  Rupert.” 

“  To  me  the  matter  is  as  plain  as  a  pike¬ 
staff.  Science  has  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  theology.  It  has  no  more  truck  with 
religion  than  gardening  has,  or  ship¬ 
building,  or  any  other  earthly  concern¬ 
ment.” 

“  But  you  tell  me  that  science,  which 
certainly  is  occupied  with  other  things  than 
theology,  announces  that  God  is  not  neces¬ 
sary  to  the  phenomenal  universe  with 
which  it  professes  to  deal?  ” 

“  That  is  so.  Let  me  read  again  to  you 
what  Professor  Ward  says:  ‘  What  we 
have  to  note  is  the  existence  in  our  time 
of  a  vast  circle  of  empirical  knowledge 
in  the  whole  range  of  which  the  idea  of 
a  Necessary  Being  or  a  First  Cause  has 
no  place.’  That  is  emphatic  enough.” 

“  Oh,  the  dogmatism  I  shall  not  dispute, 
Rupert;  but  you  must  allow  me  to  amuse 
myself  with  the  importance  you  attach  to 
this  coxcomb  of  a  statement  and  with  your 
evident  ignorance  of  the  volumes  from 
which  that  statement  is  isolated.  Let  us 
examine  the  swaggering  pronouncement,  as 
if  Professor  Ward  said  it  himself  and  said 
nothing  else.  Suppose  you  said  to  me,  ‘  2 
plus  2  equals  4 ;  ’  I  should  say  to  you,  4  Ru- 


68 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


pert,  yon  must  have  been  at  Cambridge;’ 
and  full  of  admiration  for  the  perfection  of 
your  arithmetic,  I  should  not  say  to  you, 
‘  How  completely  that  sum  of  yours  dem¬ 
onstrates  the  truth  of  God’s  existence.’ 
But  if  you  came  brandishing  your  figures 
in  my  face,  declaring  that  in  proving  4  to 
be  the  sum  of  2  added  to  2  you  had  been 
able  to  do  without  the  necessity  for  a  First 
Cause,  I  should  say  to  you,  ‘  My  friend,  in 
making  that  incongruous  affirmation  you 
cease  to  be  a  master  in  arithmetic  and  be¬ 
come  a  fool  in  philosophy ;  let  me  prove  to 
you,  as  I  can  do  very  easily,  that  in  adding 
2  unto  2  and  making  the  total  4,  you  can  not 
do  away  with  the  necessity  of  a  First 
Cause; — where,  pray,  do  you  get  your 
head? — tell  me,  too,  whence  come  these  four 
things  which  you  have  added  together?  ’ 
You  must  observe,  Rupert,  that  science  as 
science  has  truly  nothing  to  do  with  re¬ 
ligion:  just  as  I,  when  I  am  arranging 
flowers  in  a  vase  or  writing  a  letter  about 
a  puppy  to  my  nephew  in  Gloucestershire, 
have  nothing  to  do  with  religion.  But  if  I 
said,  in  writing  my  letter  or  arranging  my 
flowers,  that  God  was  not  necessary  to 
either  occupation,  I  should  cease  to  be  an 
arranger  of  flowers  and  the  writer  of  a  let¬ 
ter;  I  should  become  in  making  that  absurd 
statement  a  challenger  of  theology.  So,  in 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


69 


like  fashion,  the  man  of  science,  whenever 
he  presumes  to  see  no  necessity  in  the  least 
department  of  nature  for  a  living  God,  im¬ 
mediately  becomes  a  disputant  with  theol¬ 
ogy,  and  must  be  brought  to  a  condition  of 
becoming  penitence.  Science,  you  see,  can 
go  about  its  work,  with  its  religious  con¬ 
victions  left  at  the  door  of  its  laboratory; 
nobody  will  question  that  procedure;  but 
I  assure  you  there  is  nothing  more  alarm¬ 
ing  in  this  action  than  you  shall  be  able  to 
discover  in  the  man  who  takes  off  his  coat 
to  wash  his  hands  or  ceases  to  think  about 
eternity  when  he  examines  the  entries  in 
his  Pass-Book.” 

4  4  Then  you  agree  with  me,  at  any  rate  in 
this,  that  science  has  nothing  to  do  with 
religion?  ” 

44  I  suspect  the  tendency  of  that  state¬ 
ment,  Rupert.  Its  tendency  is  to  make  the 
careless  thinker  suppose  that  religion  is  a 
matter  of  faith  and  of  faith  alone,  that 
science  contributes  nothing  to  the  reasons 
of  belief.  Science,  as  science,  has  nothing 
more  to  do  with  religion  than  a  poet  writ¬ 
ing  a  tragedy  or  a  painter  drawing  a  por¬ 
trait  has  to  do  with  science.  If  there  had 
never  been  any  science  at  all,  religion 
would  have  existed,  as  it  obviously  did  exist 
before  there  was  anything  approaching  to 
exact  science.  A  carpenter  in  making  a 


70 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


door  has  no  need  of  the  hypothesis  of  a 
tree  to  account  for  the  wood  with  which  he 
works ;  and  so  long  as  he  sticks  to  the  busi¬ 
ness  of  door-making  he  is  a  carpenter,  and 
as  a  carpenter  has  no  concern  with  religion ; 
but  if  he  tells  me  that  to  account  for  his 
wood  he  has  no  need  of  the  hypothesis  of  a 
tree,  then  he  ceases  to  be  a  carpenter,  does 
not  speak  as  a  carpenter,  and  proves  him¬ 
self  very  obviously  to  be  a  poor  fool  in 
both  philosophy  and  common  sense. 

“  And  this  is  the  precise  attitude  of 
science  if  it  cease — which  is  very  seldom — 
to  describe  things  and  if  it  proceed  to  de¬ 
clare  that  it  can  do  without  the  hypothesis 
of  God  in  accounting  for  the  things  which 
it  describes.  That  is  simple,  obvious 
enough.  But  if  science,  as  science,  has 
nothing  to  do  with  religion,  religion  has 
something  to  do  with  science.  Let  us  ask, 
— what  is  religion?  Religion,  in  Creigh¬ 
ton’s  phrase,  4  means  the  knowledge  of  our 
destiny  and  of  the  means  of  fulfilling  it.’ 
Science  may  have  nothing  to  do  with  re¬ 
ligion,  but  this  aspect  of  religion  has  every¬ 
thing  to  do  with  science.  4  Spiritual 
things,’  says  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  ‘  tran¬ 
scend  sense,  but  that  is  because  they  already 
include  it.’  Darwin,  as  every  man  sees 
very  clearly,  gave  new  vision  to  religion. 
Astronomy  has  widened  and  deepened 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  71 

the  religious  imagination.  To  a  religious 
man  the  microscope  is  a  window  into 
the  infinity  which  he  feels  to  be  his  home. 
We  are  happier  for  the  majesty  and 
unity  of  this  divine  demonstration — the 
universe.  So  while  science  may  protest 
that  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  religion, 
religion  must  insist  that  science  is  some¬ 
thing  more  but  nothing  less  than  her 
handmaid.  Our  destiny ! — has  science, 
probing  the  laws  of  life,  nothing  to  tell  us 
there?  This  beautiful  world  on  which  we 
find  ourselves ! — does  science,  studying  the 
laws  of  nature,  discover  nothing  here  to 
strengthen  and  confirm  our  intuition  that 
things  are  things,  because  Creation  has 
shaped  them  in  the  mould  of  purpose?  Let 
science  protest  how  it  will,  religion  must 
make  use  of  science.  And  when  Professor 
Ward,  who  is  not  strictly  a  man  of  science, 
tells  me  of  a  wide  field  in  which  science  can 
find  no  need  of  a  ‘  First  Cause,’  I  think  of 
men  engaged  in  science  who  assure  me  that 
I  must  conceive  of  God  not  as  Creator  only, 
but  likewise  as  4  the  Upholder  of  all  things,’ 
of  Kelvin,  who  tells  me  that  Nature  de¬ 
pends  upon  i  everlasting  Creator  and 
Ruler,’  of  Rivarol,  who  tells  me,  ‘  God  is  the 
explanation  of  the  world,  and  the  world  is 
the  demonstration  of  God,’  and  of  Lodge, 
who  tells  me  that  ‘  the  region  of  Religion 


72  THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 

and  the  region  of  a  completer  Science  are 
one/ 

“  What  is  it  yon  have  written  on  that 
piece  of  paper  concerning  laws!  4  So  far 
as  knowledge  extends  all  is  law/  How  par¬ 
tial,  how  incomplete  a  science !  So  far  as 
knowledge  extends ! — how  far  is  that !  And 
Law!  What  does  your  Professor  mean  by 
Law ?  Has  he  defined  that  term!  And 
after  framing  his  definition,  has  he  asked 
himself  how  from  chaos  came  any  law  of 
any  kind  whatsoever!  If  there  be  laws, 
or  anything  resembling  laws,  I  will  ex¬ 
amine  them  to  see  whether  I  can  discover 
something  of  that  which  must  be  behind 
them,  something  which  shall  tell  me  news  of 
the  Law-Giver.  Tell  me  now,  Rupert,  with¬ 
out  quibble  and  without  hair-splitting  and 
without  any  painful  excursions  into  meta¬ 
physics,  whether  there  is  not  evidence  in 
science,  evidence  from  geology,  evidence 
from  biology,  evidence  from  anthropology, 
and  evidence  from  history,  of  growth,  of 
evolution,  of  becoming!  ” 

“Yes;  there  is  certainly  every  reason 
to  believe  in  evolution.” 

“  You  would  speak  about  the  laws  of 
evolution!  ” 

“  Decidedly;  I  am  not  afraid  to  use  lan¬ 
guage  in  a  plain  common-sense  fashion/ ’ 

“  So  that  visible  and  palpable  to  our 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


73 


understanding  is  a  tendency  in  nature  away 
from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  and  upward 
from  the  lower  to  the  higher!  ” 

“  Yes;  I  think  so.” 

‘  ‘  Now  a  materialist  after  your  own  heart, 
Professor  Huxley,  denounces  ‘  the  use  of 
the  word  law  as  if  it  denoted  a  thing, 
as  if  ...  it  were  a  being  endowed  with 
certain  powers,  in  virtue  of  which  the  phe¬ 
nomena  expressed  by  that  law  are  brought 
about.’  He  declared  that  such  a  concep¬ 
tion  of  the  nature  of  4  laws  ’  has  ‘nothing 
to  do  with  modern  science /  Mach  says, 
‘  The  law  always  contains  less  than  the 
fact  itself,  because  it  does  not  reproduce  the 
fact  as  a  ivliole,  but  only  that  aspect  of  it 
which  is  important  to  us.’  So  you  will 
agree  with  me  that  the  laws  of  nature  are 
not  the  creators  of  nature!  You  will  agree 
that  the  method  by  which  a  man  arrives  at 
the  fact  of  4  being  the  sum  of  2  plus  2  is 
not  the  cause  of  numbers!  ” 

“  Yes;  I  grant  that.” 

“  So  that  behind  the  method  of  nature, 
behind  the  way  in  which  we  think  nature 
works,  there  is  something  else!  ” 

“  A  number  of  hypotheses!  ” 

“  But  your  authority,  Professor  Ward, 
tells  you  that  ‘  so  far  as  knowledge  ex¬ 
tends  all  is  law,  and  law  ultimately  and 
most  clearly  to  be  formulated  in  terms  of 


74 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


matter  and  motion.’  For  him,  apparently, 
for  him  certainly  as  you  interpret  him, 
there  is  no  need  of  even  one  hypothesis. 
All  is  law.” 

“  Well,  proceed  with  your  argument.” 

“  Suppose  a  man  told  you  that  he  could 
explain  the  chemical  properties  of  an  egg 
without  the  smallest  reference  to  an  egg- 
layer;  surely  you  would  say  to  him  that  the 
chemical  analysis  of  an  egg  did  not  dis¬ 
prove  the  hypothesis  of  a  hen.  And  if  he 
insisted  that  the  combination  of  the  chemi¬ 
cals  composing  an  egg  was  what  it  was  by 
the  very  force  of  the  laws  governing  those 
chemicals;  surely  you  would  insist  that 
such  a  composition  rather  demonstrated 
than  did  away  with  the  necessity  of  an  egg- 
layer.” 

“  That  is  reasonable,  of  course;  but  we 
happen  to  know  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  a  hen.” 

“  I  am  only  leading  you  to  perceive,  Ru¬ 
pert,  that  no  laws,  even,  when  they  are 
formulated  in  terms  of  matter  and  motion 
(as  if  we  knew  anything  about  matter  and 
motion /),  can  possibly  explain  the  exist¬ 
ence  of  things.  Behind  those  laws,  since 
laws  are  neither  things  nor  agents,  there 
must  be  something, — call  it  what  you  will — 
something  creative .” 

“  I  take  it  that  Ward  would  admit  the 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


75 


possibility  of  something  behind  law.  But 
he  would  probably  assert  that  this  some¬ 
thing  is  so  unknowable  to  man  that  to 
speculate  about  it  is  to  cease  to  be  scien¬ 
tific.  ’  ’ 

4 4  He  is  more  on  my  side  than  you  think, 
Rupert ;  but  at  present  I  must  point  out  to 
you  that  in  this  passage  he  allows  that  the 
idea  of  a  4  First  Cause  ’ — the  term  is  his, 
not  mine — has  no  place  in  a  vast  circle  of 
empirical  knowledge.  He  will  not  admit, 
so  far  as  you  are  acquainted  with  his  argu¬ 
ment,  even  the  bare  hypothesis  of  a  4  First 
Cause.’  ” 

44  That  is  so.” 

44  He  comes  to  a  halt  at  law?  ” 

44  Yes.” 

44  And  law  is  neither  a  thing  nor  an 
agent?  ” 

44  Well?  ” 

44  It  is  a  process.  Man  observes  nature, 
sees  how  things  happen,  and  calls  the 
method  by  which  they  happen  a  law.  Does 
he  cease  to  be  scientific  when  he  examines 
this  process  and  endeavours  to  arrive  at 
some  definite  knowledge  as  to  the  character 
and  nature  of  that  process?  ” 

44  I  should  say  not.  But  I’m  puzzled  to 
know  how  you  can  examine  a  law — the  law 
of  gravitation,  for  example.” 

44  But  if  a  man  find,  throughout  this 


76 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


process,  a  distinct  movement  from  the  sim¬ 
ple  to  the  complex,  a  visible  effort  to  educe 
the  higher  from  the  lower,  does  he  cease 
to  be  scientific  when  he  concludes  that  the 
laws  of  nature  are  the  methods  of  a  law¬ 
giver  who  is  intelligently  and  consciously 
seeking  to  produce  something — something 
that  he  desires  should  be  produced?  ” 

“  Well,  I  am  not  entitled  to  answer  that 
question,  for  I  am  not  a  man  of  science.” 

“  Let  me  assure  you,  Rupert,  that  the 
man  of  science,  the  religious  man,  and  the 
philosopher  are  working  to  one  unifying 
goal.  They  are  all  truth-seekers.  Truth 
is  one.  There  is  not  one  truth  of  the  physi¬ 
cal,  another  truth  of  the  spiritual,  and  an¬ 
other  truth  of  the  philosophical :  these  are 
but  the  arbitrary  divisions  of  departmental 
man.  There  is  one  truth  of  which  every 
intelligent  human  creature  is  a  seeker, — 
the  truth  of  Life.  Physical  Science,  if  it 
stop  at  laws,  throws  up  the  sponge  and 
ceases  to  be  a  truth-seeker ;  it  remains  a  de- 
scriber  of  methods,  an  observer  of  rela¬ 
tions,  and  must  for  ever  hold  its  tongue 
when  men  ask  it  for  the  truth  of  Life. 
Certainly  it  must  never  proclaim  that  it 
can  do  without  the  hypothesis  of  a  God,  or 
that  it  possesses  one  fragment  of  knowl¬ 
edge  which  cannot  be  pushed  back  for  its 
final  explication  to  an  ultimate  origin.  You 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


77 


spoke  just  now  of  gravitation.  Gravita¬ 
tion  is  a  name  given  to  something  seen  to 
happen  in  nature.  What  gravitation  is, 
how  it  is  what  it  is,  no  man  can  say.  Come ; 
get  away  from  these  schismatics,  and  see 
life  as  a  whole.  Be  honest  and  courageous, 
Rupert ;  say  what  you  think  as  a  man ;  and 
answer  the  reasonable  question  I  have  put 
to  you.” 

“  I  am  disposed  to  agree  that  a  man  is 
justified  in  the  conclusion  that  the  process 
of  nature  is  evolution,  and  that  to  examine 
this  process  is  to  feel  that  nature  is  work¬ 
ing  to  produce  higher  forms  of  intelligence 
from  lower  forms  of  intelligence.  I  will 
agree  with  you  there.” 

“  Excellent,  Rupert!  Now  we  can  pro¬ 
ceed  without  any  troublesome  hair-split¬ 
ting.  Visible  in  nature  is  the  process  of 
evolution,  the  struggle  upward  and  for¬ 
ward.  It  is  not  a  struggle  in  which  strength 
gets  the  victory.  It  is  a  struggle  in  which 
the  victory  goes  to  intelligence.  Nature, 
after  many  millions  of  years,  produced,  let 
us  say,  Isaiah.  Centuries  elapse,  and  she 
produces,  let  us  say,  Shakespeare  and  Isaac 
Newton.  More  centuries  pass,  and  she 
produces  Mr.  Joseph  McCabe.  Evidently 
there  is  nothing  mechanical  in  this  proc¬ 
ess.  Evolution  does  not  grind  out  a  definite 
improvement.  But  do  you  think  that  this 


78 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


laborious  and  patient  process,  working  with 
human  materials,  has  exhausted  itself  in 
the  production  of  Mr.  Joseph  McCabe! — 
Do  you  think  that  the  evolution  of  litera¬ 
ture  culminates  in  the  twopenny  reprints 
of  the  Rational  Press  Association! — or,  Do 
you  think  that  the  process  is  merely  rest¬ 
ing,  merely  drawing  its  breath,  at  Mr. 
Joseph  McCabe,  and  that  it  will  go  on 
presently,  with  a  stouter  heart  than  ever, 
to  evolve  a  creature  even  more  intelligent, 
even  more  charming,  even  more  modest 
than  Mr.  Joseph  McCabe!  ” 

“  I  do  not  see  any  greater  reason  why 
evolution  should  stop  at  this  particular 
person  than  why  it  should  stop  at  you  or 
me.  Who  is  Mr.  Something  McCabe! 

“  Well,  we  have  reason  to  hope  that  some 
aeons  hence,  if  humanity  is  compliant,  this 
world  will  be  inhabited  by  a  race  of  very 
superior  beings,  a  race  cf  supermen,  in 
fact;  and  in  holding  this  hope  we  are 
neither  unscientific  nor  superstitious.  Now, 
Rupert,  are  we  unscientific,  are  we  super¬ 
stitious,  when  we  seek  to  inquire  whether 
there  is  a  cosmic  purpose  in  this  evolution 
which  has  its  origin  and  its  ultimate  desti¬ 
nation  beyond  the  frontiers  of  our  very  tiny 
physical  world!  ” 

“  Please  explain  yourself  a  little  more 
fully.’ ’ 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


79 


“  It  is  plain  that  Life  came  to  this  planet 
from  outside.  It  is  plain  that,  as  laws  have 
a  law-giver,  so  Life  has  a  Life-Giver.  It 
is  plain,  too,  that  the  elements  of  proto¬ 
plasm  do  not  possess  in  themselves  the 
characteristics  of  Mind  nor  the  faculty  of 
direction  to  a  conscious  end.  We  must 
conclude,  then,  that  Life  arrived  on  this 
planet  as  an  alien,  that  it  took  possession 
of  this  earth  and  colonized  it  with  a  pur¬ 
pose,  and  that  since  it  did  not  originate 
with  this  earth,  and  is  not  the  passive 
effect  but  the  active  cause  of  evolution, 
its  ultimate  destiny  belongs  to  the  uni¬ 
verse,  its  ultimate  goal  reaches  from  the 
visible  finite  into  the  invisible  Infinite.  In 
other  language,  since  it  is  reasonable  and 
scientific  to  suppose  that  creation  had  a 
Creator,  that  Life  had  a  Life-Giver,  and 
that  the  laws  of  evolution  had  a  law-giver, 
it  is  also  reasonable  and  scientific  to  sup¬ 
pose  that  the  Creator,  the  Life-Giver,  and 
the  Law-Giver,  these  Three  being  One 
God,  One  Spirit,  and  One  Infinite,  has  a 
definite  and  probably  an  understandable 
purpose  in  the  mechanism  of  the  uni¬ 
verse.^ 

“  I  feel  that  we  are  leaving  science,  but 
I  do  not  see  that  what  you  say  is  unreason¬ 
able  or  inconceivable.  ” 

“  Very  well,  I  will  say  that  I  have  done 


80 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


with  physical  science ;  but  I  will  not  admit 
that  I  have  ceased  to  be  a  truth-seeker. 
All  I  care  about  is  truth.  I  do  not  care, 
Rupert,  if  you  will  allow  me  to  say  so,  the 
feather  of  a  sparrow’s  tail  whether  my 
truth  is  scientific  so  long  as  it  is  truth. 
There  was  a  deal  of  truth  and  no  little 
knowledge  in  the  world,  you  will  agree, 
before  the  term  science  had  been  coined, 
and  before  men  of  science,  inventing  a  bar¬ 
barous  language,  had  attempted  to  isolate 
themselves  first  from  one  another  and  then 
from  the  traditions  of  human  experience. 
You  know  how  Huxley  defined  science. 
He  said  that  science  is  organized  common 
sense.  Let  us  be  content  with  that.  When 
I  depart  from  common  sense  you  shall  pull 
me  up  and  call  me  any  name  you  like  ex¬ 
cept  a  Tariff  Reformer.” 

“  Tell  me,  now,  what  you  mean  by  a 
destiny  for  Life  beyond  the  physical  uni¬ 
verse.  You  are  approaching  Immortality, 
I  take  it?  ” 

“  I  am  sticking  to  Life;  I  am  watching 
its  direction.” 

“  I  wonder  how  you  will  contrive  to  be 
scientific  in  that  region!  ” 

“  I  will  keep  to  common  sense,  in  any 
case.  Life,  Rupert,  came  from  outside  this 
planet.  You  admit  that?  ” 

“  Yes.” 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  8(1 

“  It  organizes,  it  evolves,  it  becomes?  ” 
“  Yes.” 

“  It  had  a  Cause?  ” 

“  Yes.” 

“  It  has  a  purpose?  ” 

“  You  mean  evolution?  ” 

“  Yes,  Rupert,  the  movement  from  a 
lower  to  a  higher  form  of  intelligence.” 

“  I  have  agreed  to  that.” 

“  Then  since  Life  is  the  cause  of  that 
evolution,  not  the  effect,  and  since  Life 
has  come  to  this  material  planet  from  out¬ 
side  of  it,  we  must  obviously  say  that  the 
organization,  the  evolution,  and  the  becom¬ 
ing,  which  science  makes  manifest  to  us 
here,  is  a  process  brought  by  Life  from 
outside  of  this  planet  and  belongs  there¬ 
fore  to  regions  beyond  the  frontiers  of  this 
planet.  Life  did  not  find  evolution  here; 
it  brought  evolution  with  it.  Now,  Rupert, 
I  take  you  a  step  further.  I  ask  you  to  see 
that  man  is  the  visible  head  of  earthly 
creation.  The  Life-Giver,  working  with  the 
process  we  call  evolution,  has  produced  man 
from  the  amoeba,  and  man  is  higher  in  the 
scale  of  being  than  any  other  creature  pro¬ 
duced  from  the  amoeba  by  the  Life-Giver, 
working  with  the  same  process  we  call  evo¬ 
lution.  The  bird  is  more  beautiful;  the 
bee  is  more  perfectly  instinctive;  the  ele¬ 
phant  is  stronger ;  the  stag  is  swifter.  But 


82  THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 

man  is  master.  Born  tHe  most  defenceless 
and  helpless  of  all  living  creatures;  not 
able  to  get  upon  his  feet  till  a  full  year  has 
passed  over  his  top-heavy,  fluff-covered 
head;  unfitted  to  get  his  own  food;  and 
utterly  bewildered  by  the  sights  around 
him — nevertheless  man  is  the  master  of 
the  earth,  the  head  of  creation;  he  holds 
dominion  over  all  other  creatures.’ ’ 

44  He  has  developed  his  intelligence,  his 
craft.”  _  _ 

44  There  was  intelligence,  then,  to  be 
developed?  ” 

44  Certainly;  but  other  animals  have 
intelligence.” 

44  Can  you  tell  me,  Rupert,  why  those 
other  animals  have  not  developed  so  pre¬ 
cious  a  possession?  ” 

44  No;  but  I  can  see  for  myself  that  they 
stopped  at  a  certain  point  of  their  devel¬ 
opment,  whereas  man  has  pushed  on.” 

44  Yet  man  and  the  animals  came  from 
the  same  protoplasm?  ” 

44  Yes.” 

44  But  in  man  there  is  something  which 
no  other  animal  possesses?  ” 

44  What  do  you  mean?  ” 

44  What  did  you  call  it  just  now? — the 
faculty  of  pushing  on.” 

44  The  animals  have  that  same  faculty, 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


83 


but  they  have  only  used  it  as  far  as  it 
served  immediate  needs.  ” 

“  Then  this  faculty,  common  to  man  and 
animals,  is  to  be  found  in  protoplasm — 
that  is,  in  matter  informed,  pushed,  and 
directed  by  life?  ” 

“  Yes.” 

“  But  it  works  with  greater  energy  in 
man  than  in  the  other  animals?  ” 

“  Yes.” 

“  Why?  Why,  Rupert?  ” 

“  I  cannot  say.” 

“  But  here  is  the  whole  pith  of  the  mat¬ 
ter.  Man  is  vastly  different  from  all  other 
animals,  so  vastly  different  that  it  is 
absurd  to  compare  him  with  any  single 
creature,  except  anatomically.  You  can 
compare  a  sheep  with  a  horse,  a  cow  with 
a  llama ;  but  you  cannot  compare  man  even 
with  an  anthropoid  ape.  Man  is  sovran 
and  alone.  He  invents,  he  discovers,  he 
seeks  to  know.  There  is  not  one  creature 
on  the  earth  that  can  stand  beside  him.” 

“  Well,  you  shall  have  it  as  you  wish 
it.” 

“  I  have  it  because  it  is  so.  Now, 
Rupert,  I  am  going  to  tell  you,  on  the 
authority  of  two  great  naturalists,  Darwin 
and  Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  that  evolution 
does  not  account  for  certain  faculties  in 
man  which  differentiate  him  from  all  other 


84 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


animals.  Darwin  could  find  no  explana¬ 
tion  in  evolution  for  the  highest  forms  of 
love  and  sympathy.  And,  by  the  way, 
Huxley  could  find  in  natural  selection  no 
explication  for  that  quality  in  man  which 
makes  him  poet,  painter,  and  musician — 
the  feeling  for  beauty.  Evolution  can  ac¬ 
count  for  the  rhinoceros  and  the  ant;  but 
it  cannot  account  for  Shelley  and  John 
Keats.  Wallace  told  me  again  and  again 
that  nothing  in  evolution  can  account  for 
the  musical  and  mathematical  faculties  in 
man. 

“  Have  you  ever  thought  about  Music! 
It  is,  says  Frederic  Myers,  something  dis¬ 
covered,  not  something  manufactured.  No 
theory  of  evolution  can  explain  its  rise. 
The  spiritual  power  which  we  call  genius 
is  essential  to  its  true  success.  4  It  is 
not,’  he  says,  4  from  careful  poring  over 
the  mutual  relations  of  musical  notes  that 
the  masterpieces  of  melody  have  been 
born.  They  have  come  as  they  came  to 
Mozart — in  an  uprush  of  unsummoned 
audition,  of  unpremeditated  and  self- 
revealing  joy.’  What  do  you  make  of 
music!  Music  is  as  great  a  fact  of  exist¬ 
ence  as  earth-worms  and  crystals.  Will 
Professor  Ward  explain  music  to  us  with¬ 
out  reference  to  what  he  calls  a  ‘  First 
Cause,’  will  he  explain  its  laws  to  us  in 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


85 


terms  of  matter  and  motion?  There  are 
laws  of  harmony,  but  those  laws  did  not 
precede  harmony.  Man  had  been  ravished 
and  enchanted  by  the  concourse  of  sweet 
sounds  before  ever  he  set  about  discover¬ 
ing  laws  of  harmony.  The  laws  of  gram¬ 
mar  did  not  give  us  language.  The  laws 
of  mathematics  did  not  give  us  the  meas¬ 
urableness  and  the  relations  of  things. 
Before  man  examined  any  of  these  laws  he 
uttered  his  soul  in  music,  he  expressed  his 
feelings  and  ideas  in  language,  he  assem¬ 
bled  things  together  and  constructed  intel¬ 
ligent  other-things.’  ’ 

“  What  quite  are  you  driving  at?  ” 

“  The  incontestable  and  so  obvious  fact, 
Rupert,  that  man  carries  about  with  him 
the  witness  of  a  soul.  Some  men  even  think, 
Wallace  for  one, — though  it  is  not  in  the 
least  necessary  to,  and  may  even  embar¬ 
rass  the  spiritual  theory, — that  as  Life 
came  to  this  planet  from  outside,  and  was, 
in  a  poetic  sense,  if  you  like,  an  act  of 
creation,  so  to  the  highest  animal  evolved 
from  protoplasm  came,  when  he  was  fitted 
to  receive  it,  and  from  outside  this  planet, 
a  soul,  which  was  a  second  act  of  creation. 
Bergsonism,  however,  does  away  with  this 
hypothesis.  But  of  this  I  will  speak  to 
you  when  you  spare  time  from  your  polit¬ 
ical  functions  to  pay  me  another  visit, 


86 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


unless,  of  course,  the  country  be  mean¬ 
while  hurled  into  the  turmoil  of  civil  war. 
But  before  you  go  I  must  enchant  your 
mind  with  some  further  views  of  Professor 
Ward  than  are  found  on  the  paper  you 
were  kind  enough  to  bring  with  you.  As 
it  happens,  Rupert,  the  two  volumes  of  his 
Gifford  Lectures,  entitled  N aturalism  and 
Agnosticism,  are  on  that  table  in  my  win¬ 
dow,  and  I  will  get  them  and  read  certain 
passages  to  you — in  case  you  should  ever 
fall  into  the  error  of  quoting  him  as  a 
materialist.’ ’ 

“  I  don’t  profess  to  know  anything 
about  him;  but  the  quotations  I  read  to 
you  struck  me  as  remarkable.” 

44  He  is  a  very  able  man,  Rupert,  but  so 
close  and  continuous  a  thinker  that  you 
must  always  be  careful  to  study  the  con¬ 
text  of  any  of  his  utterances  which  seem 
to  appeal  to  your  prejudices.  For  in¬ 
stance,  when  he  speaks  about  a  vast  tract 
of  knowledge  in  which  the  hypothesis  of 
a  4  First  Cause  ’  is  not  necessary,  he  is 
stating  a  contention  of  some  few  men  of 
science.  He  says  himself : — 

4  But  vast  as  the  circuit  of  modern  sci¬ 
ence  is,  it  is  still,  of  course,  limited.  On 
no  side  does  it  begin  at  the  beginning , 
or  reach  to  the  end.  In  every  direction 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


87 


it  is  possible  to  leave  its  outposts  be¬ 
hind,  and  to  reach  the  open  country 
where  poets,  philosophers,  and  prophets 
may  expatiate  freely.’ 

The  fact  is,  Rupert,  that  this  vast  tract 
of  empirical  knowledge,  relative  to  what 
there  is  for  man  to  know,  is  like  a  postage 
stamp  in  the  middle  of  the  Sahara — and 
a  postage  stamp  torn  to  pieces  and  not  to 
be  joined  together  with  the  consent  of 
those  concerned  in  its  production.  Geol¬ 
ogy  and  Biology  are  not  very  good  bed- 
mates.  What  do  you  think  your  authority 
has  to  say  concerning  materialism?  He 
says:  ‘  There  is  nothing  that  science  re¬ 
sents  more  indignantly  than  the  imputa¬ 
tion  of  materialism.  ’  He  speaks  of  the 
gaps  in  science,  gaps  which  become  enor¬ 
mous  chasms  directly  we  think  about  them 
as  plain,  simple  men.  For  example, 
‘  There  is  no  physical  theory  of  the  origin 
of  life/  The  gap  between  the  inorganic 
and  the  organic  world  is  almost  as  infinite 
as  space;  the  step  from  the  lifeless  to  the 
living  is  a  stride  from  eternity  to  eternity. 
Science,  he  says,  can  only  get  to  work  by 
‘  taking  living  things  as  there.’  In  other 
words,  science  can  only  answer  our  riddle 
by  ignoring  the  question.  Science  can  only 
make  God  a  Non-entity  by  refusing  to  con- 


88 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


sider  entity.  Herbert  Spencer,  yon  must 
know,  could  not  think  without  an  Abso¬ 
lute:  and  as  Professor  Ward  says: — 

4  It  is  worth  noting,  by  the  way,  that 
“  this  actuality  behind  appearances,” 
without  which  appearances  are  unthink¬ 
able,  is  by  Mr.  Spencer  identified  with 
that  “  ultimate  verity  ”  on  which  re¬ 
ligion  ever  insists.’ 

In  other  words,  God  is  essential  to 
thought.  When  a  few  scatter-brained 
chatterboxes  reproach  religion  with  the 
hypothesis  of  God,  we  retort  upon  them 
first  that  they  cannot  do  their  own  think¬ 
ing  without  this  very  hypothesis :  and,  sec¬ 
ond,  that  science  also  works  with  hypothe¬ 
ses — that  atoms  and  molecules  are  veri¬ 
table  hypotheses,  that  in  dealing  with 
these  posited  atoms  and  molecules,  science 
replaces  actual  perception  with  ideal  con¬ 
ception.  Science  works  with  hypotheses 
in  a  limited  and  material  orbit;  shall  not 
religion  make  use  of  her  one  sublime 
hypothesis, — and  the  hypothesis  which 
philosophers  find  essential  to  thought — in 
an  unlimited  and  spiritual  orbit?  The  at¬ 
tempt  of  physical  science  to  exclude  all 
other  knowledge  but  its  own  is  as  futile  as 
it  is  ridiculous.  4  When  Phenomenalism,’ 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


89 


says  Bradley,  4  loses  its  head  and,  becom¬ 
ing  blatant,  steps  forward  as  a  theory  of 
first  principles,  then  it  is  really  not  re¬ 
spectable.’  Get  into  your  mind,  Rupert, 
this  foundational  information, — Science 
does  not  explain ;  it  describes.  Men  of  sci¬ 
ence  describe  to  us,  here  and  there, — only 
here  and  there — what  is  happening.  They 
account  for  nothing — absolutely  for  noth¬ 
ing  at  all.  ’ 7 

“  But  what  about  Laplace?  He  surely 
accounts  for - ” 

“  Ah!  that  is  an  anecdote  very  prettily 
related  in  this  same  book.  Wait  a  moment, 
till  I  find  it.  Here  it  is : — 

4  When  Laplace  went  to  make  a  for¬ 
mal  presentation  of  his  work  to  Napo¬ 
leon,  the  latter  remarked:  “  M.  Laplace, 
they  tell  me  you  have  written  this  large 
book  on  the  system  of  the  universe,  and 
have  never  even  mentioned  its  Creator.” 
Whereupon  Laplace  drew  himself  up 
and  answered  bluntly:  Sire,  I  had  no 
need  of  any  such  hypothesis.”  9 

“  Rupert,  I  particularly  like  that 
phrase,  4  Whereupon  Laplace  drew  him¬ 
self  up.’  Can  you  not  see  the  straighten¬ 
ing  of  that  backbone,  the  hardening  of  the 
muscles,  and  the  tilt  upward  of  the  gentle- 


90 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


man’s  head!  What  a  picture  it  would 
make — that  historic  scene!  Think  of  it 
hung  side  by  side  with  a  picture  of  the 
bowed  and  broken  Christ,  crying,  ‘  My 
God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken 
me?  ’  Laplace’s  superiority  to  God: 
Christ’s  despair  of  God! 

“  But  do  you  not  see,  apart  altogether 
from  the  immodesty  of  M.  Laplace  (who, 
in  drawing  himself  up,  Rupert,  certainly 
transmitted  from  his  will  to  his  bones  and 
muscles  an  order,  but  how  transmitted  and 
how  carried  out  he  could  not  tell  us,  though 
he  could  do  without  a  God  in  his  scheme 
of  creation),  that  his  statement  really 
amounts  to  very  little  more  than  the  state¬ 
ment  of  our  carpenter  that  in  making  a 
door  he  has  no  need  of  the  tree  hypothesis? 
Laplace  takes  what  he  finds  and  describes 
it.  What  he  doesn’t  actually  see  he  imag¬ 
ines,  takes  for  granted,  postulates.  He 
neither  tells  us  how  that  which  he  found 
came  to  be,  nor  explains  why  it  is  what  it 
is.  Behind  everything,  be  it  vapour  or 
fire-mist,  or  what  you  will,  there  is  Origin ; 
and  to  say  that  fluid  haze  or  fire-mist  has 
in  itself  the  potentiality  of  everything  that 
is  and  everything  that  is  to  be,  this  is  only 
to  assert  that  the  Origin  so  determined  the 
properties  of  that  fluid  haze  or  fire-mist.” 

“You  will  admit,  however,  that  physical 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


91 


science  is  continually  invading  the  spheres 
which  were  once  in  the  possession  of  nat¬ 
ural  religion.” 

“  That  is  also  in  Ward!  Here  it  is,  in 
the  very  first  chapter,  which  you  have  read 
to  some  purpose,  or  was  it  read  to  you, 
Rupert?  Rupert! — Rupert!  was  it  read  to 
you  by  someone  to  whom  you  had  misrep¬ 
resented  my  views?  Never  mind.  Let  us 
have  it  again: — 

‘  God  made  the  country,  they  say,  and 
man  made  the  town.  Now  we  may,  as 
Descartes  did,  compare  science  to  the 
town.  It  is  town-like  in  its  compactness 
and  formality.  .  .  .  All  was  country 
once,  but  meanwhile  the  town  extends 
and  extends,  and  the  country  seems  to 
be  ever  receding  before  it/ 

“  Where  is  the  country,  Rupert?  Well, 
I  will  tell  you.  It  is  still  where  it  was.  It 
is  the  one  solid  foundation  on  which  the 
town  is  built :  it  is  the  life-giving  air  which 
blows  through  those  narrow  streets:  it  is 
the  sunlight  which  shines  upon  the  walls 
of  brick  and  stone,  and  it  is  the  blue  heaven 
above  the  chimney-stacks  and  the  suffocat¬ 
ing  smoke-canopy,  but  above  everything 
else  is  the  foundation — the  fact  of  What 
Is  beneath  all  our  superstructures.  With- 


92 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


out  the  country  there  would  be  no  town. 
The  town,  with  all  its  splendid  temples  and 
all  its  mechanical  perfection  of  law  and 
order,  could  not  exist  but  for  the  solid 
rock  beneath  it.  When  an  enemy  takes  a 
territory,  though  it  put  all  the  inhabitants 
to  the  sword,  the  territory  remains.  Sci¬ 
ence  may  take,  it  probably  will  take,  all 
the  territory  which  was  once  assigned  to 
natural  religion.  But  the  territory  will 
remain,  even  when  the  theologians  of  nat¬ 
ural  religion  are  every  one  slaughtered. 
Science  may  map  it  out,  may  measure  it, 

mav  describe  it  with  an  exactness  which 
%/ 

natural  religion  never  attempted,  and  per¬ 
haps  never  could  have  accomplished;  but 
science  will  never  be  able  either  to  account 
for  the  existence  of  that  territory  or  to 
explain  it. 

“  The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  is 
here.  Science  neither  affirms  nor  denies 
the  existence  of  God.  It  cannot  do  either, 
because  it  has  set  itself  a  task  which  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  existence  of  God. 
It  does  not  seek  to  explain,  but  to  observe 
and  describe.  No  man  of  science,  speaking 
as  a  man  of  science,  can  say  that  there  is 
a  God  or  that  there  is  not  a  God.  But 
the  least  sectarian  of  men  of  science,  those 
able  to  see  the  marvellous  unity  of  this  uni¬ 
versal  frame,  can,  speaking  as  men  of  sci- 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


93 


ence,  look  forward  and  assert  that  ‘  the 
region  of  religion  and  the  region  of  a  com¬ 
pleter  science  are  one.’  In  the  meantime, 
Rupert,  you  and  I  who  know  where  the 
carpenter  gets  his  tree  from,  and  how  the 
chemical  properties  of  an  egg  were  once 
included  in  a  hen,  may  certainly  ask  men 
of  science  whether  they  feel  as  they  work 
in  their  very  small  and  disparate  spheres 
of  observation  that  it  is  more  reasonable 
to  believe  in  a  God  than  not  to  believe  in 
a  God.  Put  that  question  to  men  of  sci¬ 
ence,  and  you  will  find  that  the  answer  is 
the  answer  embodied  in  my  very  long  let¬ 
ter.  ‘  The  world  itself  is  the  Bible  of 
Nature — the  revelation  of  God  to  us  as  a 
Creator. ’  Nature  is  not  the  watch;  it  is 
the  watchmaker  making  the  watch.  ” 


V 


CONCERNING  A  KNOWABLE  GOD 

‘  ‘/^VNE  thing  I  have  decided  for  all 
1  1  eternity/ ’  said  Rupert,  when  he 

paid  me  another  visit ;  and  here, 
sitting  forward  in  his  chair,  fixing  an 
accusatory  gaze  upon  me,  he  added  with 
conviction, — 4  4  namely,  that  the  Socratic 
method  is  devilishly  one-sided.” 

“  Well,”  I  said,  “  I  am  perfectly  willing 
that  you  should  put  on  the  philosopher’s 
robe  and  that  I  should  play  the  part  of 
Adeimantus  or  Glaucon.” 

“  Strangely  enough,”  said  he,  “  that  is 
what  I  wished  to  suggest  to  you;  and,  in¬ 
deed,  I  have  come  so  full  of  questions  that 
I  must  begin  at  once,  if  you  are  to  hear 
but  a  tithe  of  them.” 

“  Well,  be  brief  in  your  questions  and 
I  will  be  as  brief  as  truth  allows  in  my 
answers.” 

“  The  first  question - ” 

4  4  But,  my  dear  Socrates,  had  you  not 
better  tell  me,  for  a  beginning,  what  is  the 
thesis  you  have  in  your  mind!  ” 

94 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


95 


“  You  call  me  Socrates,  but  you  begin 
at  once  to  play  the  Socratic  trick  upon  me. 
Please  remember  that  it  is  not  the  function 
of  the  prisoner  in  the  dock  to  put  a  ques¬ 
tion  to  the  prosecuting  counsel.  ” 

“  But  a  prisoner  is  supposed  to  know 
the  nature  of  the  charge  preferred  against 
him.  ’ ’ 

“  Well,  I  will  tell  you  that  my  argument 
concerns  the  existence  of  a  Knowable  God. 
I  agree  that  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude 
from  the  evidence  we  possess,  both  in  phys¬ 
ical  science  and  in  experience,  that  there 
is  Something  behind  appearances,  some 
kind  of  Law-Giver,  some  kind  of  Life- 
Giver;  but  I  hold  that  it  is  utterly  impos¬ 
sible  for  us  to  know  anything  about  Him 
and  that  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  we 
are  of  any  more  concern  to  Him  than  the 
electrons  of  matter.  ” 

4  4  Very  well.  Begin  now  with  your  first 
question.” 

4  ^  Is  it  possible  for  a  finite  being  to  pos¬ 
sess  knowledge  of  an  Infinite  Being?  ” 

“  It  is  manifestly  not  possible  for  a 
finite  being  to  possess  absolute  knowledge 
of  an  Infinite  Being;  but  it  is  also  mani¬ 
festly  impossible  for  a  finite  being  not  to 
possess  some  knowledge  of  an  Infinite  Be¬ 
ing,  since  the  finite  being  is  obviously  an 
expression  of  that  Infinite  Being’s  Will. 


96 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


When  we  speak  of  a  man  ‘  denying  God  ’ 
we  mean  that  he  denies  this  inner  witness 
of  the  soul.  He  denies  the  existence 
within  himself  of  the  memory  of  his  divine 
origin.” 

“  Then  you  think  that  the  only  real  evi¬ 
dence  we  possess  of  God  is  within  us? 
How  do  you  know,  pray,  that  this  con¬ 
sciousness  of  God  is  not  a  matter  of  auto¬ 
suggestion?  ” 

“  How  do  you  know  that  you  are  sitting 
in  my  most  comfortable  arm-chair?  ” 

“  Come,  now,  you  must  not  answer  my 
questions  with  questions  of  your  own.” 

“  Very  well;  I  will  try  another  method. 
I  do  not  say  that  the  only  real  evidence 
we  possess  of  God  is  the  divine  memory 
which  each  man  carries  in  his  soul.  But 
I  do  say  that  this  witness  is  the  most  per¬ 
fect  and  assuring.  There  is  evidence  of 
God  in  everything,  because  God  is  the 
origin  of  everything.  I  am  sure  of  God’s 
existence  when  I  look  at  the  stars,  when 
I  walk  in  the  fields  and  woods,  when  I  read 
a  book  of  science  or  amaze  myself  with  a 
microscope.  But  my  deepest  and  my  most 
passionate  sense  of  God’s  existence  comes 
when  I  obey  that  command  of  the  Most 
High,  expressed  by  the  lips  of  an  inspired 
poet,  Be  still,  and  knoiv  that  1  am  God. 
That  is  to  say,  I  am  most  sure  of  God  when 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  97 

I  do  not  interrupt  His  communications 
with  irrelevancies  of  my  own  concern.” 

“  Now,  I  want  to  know  how  you  can  be 
certain  that  you  are  not  deceiving  yourself. 
For  instance,  I  am  not  sure  about  God’s 
existence.  Plenty  of  men  are  perfectly 
sure  that  He  does  not  exist.  How  do  you 
satisfy  yourself  that  you  are  right,  and 
the  others  are  wrong?  ” 

“  If  I  were  the  only  man  in  the  world 
partially  conscious  of  God,  I  should  still 
hold  my  partial  consciousness  of  God  to 
be  evidence  of  His  existence.  Such  is  the 
nature  of  this  evidence  that  it  is  impossible 
for  a  man  to  deny  it  without  committing 
intellectual  and  moral  suicide.  But  when 
I  find  that  the  weight  of  numbers  is  over¬ 
whelmingly  on  my  side,  that,  even  if  it  be 
only  intellectually  or  subconsciously,  the 
millions  of  the  earth  acknowledge  a  God; 
when  I  discover  that  among  the  civilized 
nations  those  who  have  a  living  conscious¬ 
ness  of  God  are  the  most  pure,  the  most 
loving,  the  most  virtuous,  the  most  self- 
sacrificing,  and  the  most  uplifting  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  human  family;  and  when  I  find 
that  only  a  very  fractional  minority  of 
moral  men  actually  deny  the  existence  of 
God, — then  I  feel  myself  justified  in  the 
conviction  that  it  is  rather  for  them  to  dis¬ 
prove  the  experience  of  humanity  than  it 


98 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


is  for  me  to  question  the  sense  of  God 
which  is  inherent  in  me,  and  which  I  share, 
however  dimly  and  weakly,  with  the  major¬ 
ity  of  my  fellow  creatures.” 

“  Do  you  tell  me  that  you  never  doubt 
the  existence  of  God?  ” 

44  Yes.” 

44  I  cannot  believe  you.” 

4  4  That  is  only,  Rupert,  because  you  put 
a  question  which  Socrates  would  have  told 
you  was  too  clumsy  for  the  answer  you 
desired.  You  threw  a  good  fly,  badly.” 

44  Well,  how  should  I  have  put  it?  ” 

44  You  should  have  asked  me  whether  I 
do  not  sometimes  doubt  my  notions  about 
God.” 

44  Ah,  well,  consider  that  I  have  asked 
you  that  question.” 

44  I  confess  to  you  that  very  often  I  am 
troubled  by  such  doubts.  I  cannot  under¬ 
stand  the  methods  of  God.  I  cannot  har¬ 
monize  some  of  His  laws  with  what  I  feel 
in  my  soul  to  be  the  truth  of  His  nature. 
But  of  the  existence  of  a  God,  of  the  exist¬ 
ence  of  a  Power  not  ourselves  working  by 
the  process  of  evolution  to  an  end  which 
is  cosmic  and  perfect,  I  never  have,  I  can¬ 
not  possibly  have,  one  momenta  doubt.” 

44  Then  you  will  grant  me  that  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  this  God  is  unknow¬ 
able?  ” 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


99 


“  I  will  grant  you  nothing  of  the  sort.” 
“  But  you  cannot  understand  Him?  ” 

“  I  cannot  understand  Him  absolutely, 
and  I  cannot  understand  entirely  even 
what  I  do  perceive  of  Him ;  but  to  say  that 
He  is  unknowable  for  these  reasons  would 
be  very  much  like  saying  that  because  I 
have  not  travelled  over  every  inch  of 
Africa  and  do  not  know  perfectly  every 
single  part  of  Africa  that  I  have  travelled 
over,  therefore  Africa  is  not  knowable.  A 
God  we  could  understand  would  be  ex¬ 
haustible  by  us;  in  fact,  He  would  cease  to 
be  God.” 

“  But  you  do  know  something  of  God?  ” 
“  I  know  something  of  God  immanent  in 
man  and  nature ;  and  I  know  something  of 
God  in  the  history  of  the  human  race.” 

“  Oh,  of  course,  if  you  go  to  revela¬ 
tion - ” 

“  Well,  you  shall  keep  me  in  daykness 
if  you  like,  if  you  are  afraid  to  bring  your 
questions  into  the  light  of  historical  expe¬ 
rience.  How  you  fellows  funk  St.  Paul!  ” 
“  I  certainly  intend  to  keep  you  either 
to  science  or  philosophy.  Now,  will  you 
kindly  take  it  that  I  am  a  visitant  from 
another  and  a  quite  godless  star,  who  is 
asking  you  for  information  about  this  par¬ 
ticular  planet,  and  will  you  tell  me, — I  who 
am  entirely  without  a  sense  of  God — why 


100 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


I  ought,  as  a  rational  being,  to  admit  the 
existence  of  a  God!  ” 

“  If  you  were  a  rational  being  you  would 
not  be  entirely  without  a  sense  of  GoJTTor 
rationality  is  a  function  of  the  soul,  which 

is  divine.  You  yourself  doubt  the  exist¬ 
ence  of  God,  but  you  are  discussing  that 
sublime  hypothesis;  you  cannot  deny  that 
there  is  a  possibility  of  God’s  existence — 
and  this  is  your  inner  witness  of  a  divine 
origin:  you,  a  finite  being,  can  conceive  of 
an  Infinite  Being.  But  I  will  imagine  you 
to  be  the  monster  you  suggest,  and  I  will  en¬ 
deavour  to  answer  your  question, — albeit, 
I  cannot,  of  course,  convince  you,  any  more 
that  I  could  convince  a  bullfinch  or  a  fox- 
terrier,  since  there  is  nothing  in  a  monster 
to  respond  to  the  sense  of  God. 

“  Now,  Rupert,  in  answering  your  ques¬ 
tion,  I  should  point  you,  first  of  all,  to  the 
greatness,  the  splendour,  and  the  orderli¬ 
ness  of  the  cosmos :  I  should  ask  you  to  see 
that  this  vast  universe  has  continuity,  a 
‘  rigorous  concatenation,’  and  does  not  be¬ 
have  with  the  eccentricity  of  cataclysm;  I 
should  then  tell  you  that  every  living  thing 
on  this  planet  has  evolved  from  a  sub¬ 
stance  which  could  not  possibly  have  been 
one  of  its  original  elements;  and  I  should 
then  point  out  to  you  that  man,  at  the  head 
of  all  living  things  on  this  planet,  is  so 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


101 


vastly  different,  except  in  his  perishable 
structure,  from  the  other  creatures  which 
have  been  evolved  from  this  same  alien 
protoplasm,  that  it  is  reasonable  to  sup¬ 
pose  he  must  possess  a  faculty  not  to  be 
found,  even  potentially,  in  protoplasm. 
When  I  had  convinced  you  on  these  heads, 
and  when  I  had  proved  to  you  that  phys¬ 
ical  science  has  no  theory  whatsoever  con¬ 
cerning  the  origin  of  life,  and  that  all  its 
efforts  to  reach  back  into  the  past  arrive 
only  at  a  process  and  fructify  only  in  de¬ 
scriptions  of  that  process,  I  should  then 
proceed  to  convince  you  that  a  man  cannot 
do  his  thinking  without  the  hypothesis  both 
of  a  God  and  a  soul.” 

“  Let  me  interrupt  you,  or  my  questions 
will  consume  me.  What  do  you  mean  ex¬ 
actly  by  saying  that  a  man  cannot  do  his 
thinking?  ” 

“  I  should  greatly  like  at  this  point, 
Rupert,  to  play  the  Socrates.” 

“  Your  answers  are  already  long  enough 
for  Socrates  multiplied  by  Plato  a  dozen 
times.  But,  by  your  leave,  I  will  stick  to 
my  role.  Now,  then,  what  is  your  answer? 
How  is  it  a  man  cannot  do  his  thinking 
without  the  hypothesis  of  a  God  and  a 
soul?  ” 

“  Let  us  suppose,  Rupert,  that  evolution 
had  ceased  with  a  soulless  man :  let  us  sup- 


102 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


pose  that  at  the  head  of  creation  was  a 
gorilla-naan  as  nnmindful  of  beauty,  order, 
and  knowledge  as  the  other  apes.  There  is 
nothing  absurd  in  this  supposition,  since 
on  any  theory  of  anti-Theism  man  with  a 
soul  is  merely  an  accidental  result  of  a 
purposeless  process.  It  is  not  inevitable 
but  a  wonder  that  he  exists.  Now,  if  man 
with  his  soul  had  not  come  into  existence, 
if  man  had  remained  gorilla-man,  this 
physical  world  would  have  kept  all  its 
secrets  which  man  with  his  soul  has 
dragged  forth ;  and  the  wonders  of  beauty, 
order,  and  relation  would  have  had  no  ex¬ 
istence  whatever  in  the  consciousness  of 
any  single  living  thing.  There  would  be 
no  geometry,  no  chemistry,  no  astronomy, 
no  physiology. 

“  Not  only  this.  The  earth  would  be 
swamp,  desert,  wilderness,  and  jungle. 
Not  an  acre  of  soil  would  be  cultivated. 
Not  a  word  would  be  uttered.  Not  one 
question  would  be  asked.  Life  would  not 
be  aware  of  itself.  Evolution  would  have 
come  to  a  dead  stop.  4  Were  the  World 
now  as  it  was  the  sixth  day,  there  were 
yet  a  chaos.  ’  It  would  have  been,  this  very 
lovely  and  endearing  planet,  a  place  of 
skulls.  But  we  cannot  imagine,  because 
the  gorilla-man  did  not  perceive  the  rela¬ 
tion  of  one  thing  to  another,  that  therefore 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


103 


no  such  relation  existed,  that  because  he 
did  not  observe  and  reflect  upon  the  uni¬ 
formity  of  laws,  therefore  no  such  unifor¬ 
mity  existed.  And  yet,  on  careful  exam¬ 
ination,  we  discover  that  there  is  no  real 
relation  of  one  thing  to  another,  and  no 
real  uniformity  of  laws;  in  fact,  we  dis¬ 
cover  that  the  relation  of  one  thing  to  an¬ 
other  and  the  uniformity  of  laws  exist  in 
the  perception  of  man’s  mind.  Uniformity 
of  laws  is  simply  our  uniformity  of  expe¬ 
rience. 

“  As  Kant  said  very  daringly,  but  very 
truly,  4  The  intellect  makes  nature,  though 
it  does  not  create  it.’  A  thing  is  round 
because  the  mind  sees,  let  us  say,  that  it 
is  not  square :  a  thing  is  green  because  the 
mind  sees,  let  us  say,  that  it  is  not 
scarlet:  a  thing  is  in  motion  because  the 
mind  sees  that  it  is  not  stationary.  But 
on  our  original  supposition  that  man  with 
his  soul  has  no  existence,  and  that  gorilla- 
man  cannot  perceive  the  relation  of  things, 
must  we  say  that  there  is  nothing  round 
or  square,  nothing  green  or  scarlet,  noth¬ 
ing  in  motion  or  at  a  standstill?  Clearly 
we  cannot  make  this  assertion,  for  these 
things  obviously  were  in  existence  before 
man  had  risen  on  the  earth  to  observe  them 
and  reflect  upon  their  differences.  If  they 
are  what  man’s  mind  perceives  them  to  be, 


104 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


such  they  were  before  man  was  born  on 
the  earth.  Coal  was  in  the  soil  millions  of 
years  before  man  kindled  a  fire  or  manu¬ 
factured  gas  to  light  the  streets  of  his 
towns.  Chloroform  was  in  existence  mil¬ 
lions  of  years  before  man  made  it  a  way 
of  escape  from  physical  pain.  That  which 
we  call  ether  filled  space,  and  brought  to 
our  earth  the  light  of  the  stars,  brought 
to  our  eyes  the  vibrations  of  all  objects, 
how  many  thousand  years  before  man  dis¬ 
covered  that  he  could  transmit  speech  and 
thought  by  tapping  it  with  a  needle  of 
steel?  These  things  have  a  veritable  ex¬ 
istence,  and  if  man  had  never  risen  to  a 
condition  to  discover  them,  still  they  would 
have  had  that  veritable  existence.  Effects 
followed  causes,  continuity  threaded  the 
entire  and  intricate  operations  of  nature, 
beauty  was  beauty,  and  evolution  was  in 
labour  with  the  elements  of  protoplasm, 
before  any  living  creature  stirred  upon  the 
surface  of  the  earth. 

“  Was  there,  then,  no  mind  to  know  that 
effect  followed  cause,  that  continuity  ex¬ 
isted,  that  beauty  was  beauty,  and  that 
evolution  laboured  to  produce  the  higher 
from  the  lower,  until  a  man  was  born? 
That  is  as  much  as  to  say,  what  science 
itself  proclaims  an  utterance  of  madness, — 
that  evolution  produced  mind.  Very  cer- 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


105 


tainly  mind  preceded  matter.  Beyond  all 
question  mind  anticipated  the  relation  of 
one  thing  to  another  thing  before  those 
things  themselves  existed.  And  man, 
gradually  labouring,  discovers  what  the 
Original  Mind  anticipated.  The  sun  does 
not  perceive  that  it  draws  moisture  from 
the  earth,  and  the  moisture  is  not  conscious 
that  it  has  relation  to  the  sun ;  but  all  that 
man  observes  in  nature,  every  separate 
perception,  every  disconnected  experience, 
is  united  into  one  body  of  cognition  by  the 
spirit  in  man — that  spirit  which  is  the 
4  active,  unifying  principle,  the  ground  of 
self-consciousness  and  self-determination.’ 
The  connection  of  one  thing  with  another 
is  not  a  nexus  in  those  things  themselves, 
but  is  an  observation  of  man’s  intellect. 
It  is  mind  which  discovers  the  unity  of 
nature  by  possessing  a  unifying  principle 
in  itself.  If  man’s  mind  discovers  unity, 
that  unity  must  have  existed  in  the  Mind 
which  preceded  matter.  What  is  that 
Mind?  The  Mind  which  is  the  origin  of 
things  is  God.  Man  perceives  a  unity  in 
nature  because  God  is  immanent  both  in 
him  and  in  nature.  On  the  other  hand, 
Rupert,  nature,  as  anti-Theism  presents  it 
to  us,  is  a  machine ; — a  machine  which  has 
produced  mind,  but  a  machine,  as  your 
friend  Professor  Ward  has  told  us,  which 


106 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


could  not  start  itself,  cannot  alter  or  stop 
itself,  and  possesses  neither  for  itself  nor 
for  us  the  smallest  degree  of  purpose, — it 
is  a  continuous  process  without  cause  and 
without  destiny!  But  science  has  been 
driven  from  such  a  contention.  It  was 
Huxley  himself  who  came  to  say  that  ‘  our 
one  certainty  is  the  existence  of  the  men¬ 
tal  world  and  it  was  Herbert  Spencer 
who  said  that  the  idea  of  the  Absolute  was 
essential  to  thought.  If  you  think  you  will 
become  aware  that  God  is  necessary  to 
your  thoughts;  the  more  profoundly  you 
think  the  more  certain  will  you  feel  of 
God’s  reality.” 

“  It  is  time  I  got  in  another  question. 
Now,  I  quite  agree  with  you  that  mind  ex¬ 
isted  before  matter,  and  that  matter  exists 
for  mind.  But  I  do  not  see  that  mind  is 
anything  except  a  name  for  the  Unknown, 
and  I  certainly  do  not  see  that  the  fact  of 
one  original  Mind  justifies  the  enormous 
assumption  that  man  possesses  a  soul.  Tell 
me,  then,  how  you  connect  the  one  idea  with 
the  other?  ” 

“  Come,  Rupert,  I  do  not  think  that  the 
connection  between  mind  and  mind  ought 
to  present  any  serious  difficulties  to  an 
intelligent  person.  I  am  content,  for  my¬ 
self,  to  know  that  as  life  can  only  proceed 
from  life,  so  mind  can  only  proceed  from 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


107 


mind.  And  since  it  is  obvious  that  original 
Life  is  greater  than  the  derived  life,  and 
original  Mind  greater  than  the  derived 
mind,  I  do  not  scruple  to  attribute  to  the 
original  Living-Mind  every  power  and 
every  feeling  which  I  possess  myself,  but 
in  a  transcendently  greater  degree.  This 
gives  me  a  God  who  loves,  a  God  who  is 
good,  a  God  who  is  truth,  and  a  God  who 
creates.  And  when  I  ask  whether  the  frag¬ 
ment  of  this  God  which  I  possess  in  my 
spirit  is  immortal,  I  answer  that  since  the 
Giver  is  of  necessity  immortal,  so,  too,  my 
spirit,  a  part  of  Him,  must  be  immortal.,, 

“  Do  you  mean  that  your  personality, 
or  your  mind-principle,  is  immortal?  ” 

“  My  identity  is  I  myself.  It  is  that 
which  alone  is  immortal.  As  I  am  not  my 
hands,  so  I  am  not  my  headache ;  and  when 
my  hands  have  perished  and  my  brain  has 
perished,  I  shall  persist.’ ’ 

“  But  are  you  not  your  brain? — some 
kind  of  union  or  synthesis  of  your  nerve- 
centres?  ” 

“  Clearly  I  am  more  than  that.  I  love. 
I  can  lay  down  my  life  for  my  friends. 
You  can  wound  me  with  a  word.” 

u  But  your  personality  is  made  up  of 
your  brain?  ” 

“  The  brain  is  the  machine  by  which  I 
work,  the  piano  at  which  I  play,  the  tel- 


108 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


©graphic  instrument  by  which  I  receive 
and  transmit  messages ;  but  it  is  not  I  my¬ 
self.  Think  for  a  moment.  Everything  I 
see  enters  through  the  lens  of  my  eye  as  an 
etheric  vibration.  This  etheric  vibration 
beats  upon  my  optic  nerve  and  produces — 
what!  Clearly,  nothing  but  another  vibra¬ 
tion.  A  vibration  can  produce  only  a  vi¬ 
bration.  What  is  it,  Rupert,  that  trans¬ 
lates  that  vibration  into  an  idea?  Is  it  the 
brain?  But  consider  what  divine  gifts  you 
bestow  upon  this  physical  and  so  easily 
damaged  brain.  You  make  it  not  only  a 
thinker;  you  make  it  a  careful,  critical, 
self-dissatisfied  thinker.  I  take  my 
thoughts  and  examine  them ;  I  dismiss 
some  of  my  own  thoughts  as  untrue  or  as 
unworthy;  I  take  those  that  I  consider  true 
and  worthy,  and  I  bring  them  into  com¬ 
parison  with  the  thoughts  of  other  men 
and  judge  how  true  they  are  and  how 
worthy.  When  I  write  a  letter,  if  I  have 
the  time  and  the  letter  is  an  important  one, 
I  read  it  over  to  see  if  I  can  improve  it. 
I  strike  out  a  word  and  put  in  another 
which  seems  more  accurately  to  express 
my  meaning.  I  do  away  with  a  whole  sen¬ 
tence,  perhaps  a  long  paragraph,  or  per¬ 
haps  I  even  destroy  the  whole  letter,  be¬ 
cause  on  reflection  I  am  not  satisfied  with 
what  I  have  written, — it  does  not  say  what 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


109 


I  now  recognize  I  ought  to  have  said. 
Think  of  a  brain  knowing  anything  about 
shades  of  meaning.  Over  and  above  my 
mental  activity,  clearly,  there  presides  a 
judge,  a  critic,  a  self-conscious  and  dis¬ 
criminating  Ego, — something  which  com¬ 
plains  of  the  brain,  something  which  de¬ 
cides  and  wills. 

“  This  Ego  it  is  which  takes  the  etheric 
vibrations  from  the  optic  nerve  and  makes 
them  the  idea  of  a  flower  or  a  tree,  and  per¬ 
ceives  the  relations  existing  between  the 
flower  and  the  tree.  This  Ego,  too,  takes  the 
vibrations  of  air  from  the  drum  of  my  ear, 
and  makes  them  the  ideas  of  music  or  lan¬ 
guage,  and  perceives  the  relations  existing 
between  music  and  language.  Just  as  the 
telegraphic  operator  receives  and  inter¬ 
prets  messages,  which  the  machine  could 
not  understand,  so  this  Ego  of  mine  re¬ 
ceives  and  interprets  the  impressions 
which  reach  it  from  an  exterior  world. 
This  soul  in  me,  with  its  divine,  living,  and 
unmechanical  power  of  converting  vibra¬ 
tions  into  ideas,  is  a  self-determining  en¬ 
tity,  a  being  which  chooses  and  decides, 
which  is  not  constant  like  a  law  of  nature, 
but  inconstant,  wayward,  wilful,  and  in¬ 
finitely  capricious.  The  bee  hatched  from 
the  cell  knows  instantly  what  to  do,  and 
does  it  with  mathematical  precision.  But 


110 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


man,  growing  very  slowly  into  a  knowledge 
of  his  environment,  does  not  do  what  other 
men  have  done  before  him,  does  not  think 
as  other  men  thought  before  him,  is  not 
satisfied  with  life  as  he  finds  it,  proceeds 
at  once  upon  an  adventure  of  his  own.  No 
other  creature  is  so  impatient  of  tradition, 
so  little  influenced  by  heredity,  so  little  re¬ 
liant  on  instinct,  so  little  ruled  or  satisfied 
by  habit.  The  miracle  of  man  is  his 
visible  history, — ‘  a  history  not  only  of 
gradual  self -adaptation  to  a  known  envi¬ 
ronment,  but  of  gradual  discovery  of  an 
environment,  always  there,  but  unknown.’ 

“  Do  you  know,  Rupert,  that  neither 
Laplace  nor  Kant  recorded  ‘  a  single  as¬ 
tronomical  observation  of  nebulae  It  is 
practically  certain  that  they  never  saw  a 
nebula, — never  saw  the  stuff  of  the  nebular 
hypothesis!  Reflect  upon  the  ideal  con¬ 
cepts  of  man,  the  imagination  of  man,  the 
reach,  the  grasp,  and  the  longing  of  his 
understanding,  and  you  find  yourself  pass¬ 
ing  through  a  gap  in  the  hedge  of  mate¬ 
rialism.  Man  is  the  one  rebel  in  nature; 
and  he  is  a  rebel  because  he  transcends 
nature.  Where  nature  ends,  as  Matthew 
Arnold  has  said,  man  begins.  It  was  de¬ 
clared  by  some  eastern  seer,  and  Bergson 
has  woven  the  idea  into  his  philosophy, 
that  Life  sleeps  in  the  plant,  walks  in  its 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


111 


sleep  in  the  animal,  and  in  man  is  awake. 
Man  is  Life  conscious  of  Life.  And  is  it 
for  me  to  prove  that  self-conscious  Life, — 
the  cause,  not  the  consequence,  of  evolu¬ 
tion — is  immortal ;  or  is  it  for  you  to  dem¬ 
onstrate  that  it  depends  so  completely  on 
matter  that  without  matter  it  ceases  to 
exist!  Can  you  prove  to  me  that  Life  self- 
conscious  in  man,  and  given  to  man  by  the 
Life  which  existed  before  one  atom  of  the 
universe  was  formed,  is  so  isolated  from 
the  Life-Giver,  so  completely  the  body  it 
makes  use  of,  that  with  the  disintegration 
of  those  physical  atoms  it  ceases  to  be, 
becomes  as  if  it  had  never  been!  99 

“  I  do  not  feel  that  Life  can  ever  cease, 
but  I  do  not  feel  convinced  that  personality 
persists  after  death.  I  accept  your  life- 
principle,  but  I  deny  your  soul.” 

4  4  Some  men  hold,  Rupert,  that  the  Uni¬ 
versal  Mind  for  whom  all  things  exist,  and 
without  whom  nothing  could  exist  that  does 
exist,  transcends  personality.  Others,  like 
Lotze,  declare  that  the  ideal  of  personality 
is  never  fully  attained  by  the  human  con¬ 
sciousness,  and  that  ‘  God  is  the  only  being 
who  is  in  the  fullest  and  completest  sense  a 
Person.’  Let  either  school  have  it  as  they 
will.  The  supreme  knowledge  we  possess 
is  the  fact  of  our  own  self-conscious  per¬ 
sonality.  You  are  so  aware  of  your  own 


112  THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 

identity,  so  convinced  of  your  own  char¬ 
acter,  that  you  take  pains  to  deepen  the 
one  and  to  improve  the  other.  You  are  not 
satisfied  with  yourself.  4  0  wretched  man 
that  I  am !  ’ — is  a  universal  cry  of  the  hu¬ 
man  race.  A  multitude  of  men  and  women 
on  the  first  day  of  every  week,  kneeling  in 
the  presence  of  the  Invisible  Excellence, 
cry  out,  truly  and  earnestly,  4  We  acknowl¬ 
edge  and  bewail  our  manifold  sins  and 
wickedness,  which  we,  from  time  to  time, 
most  grievously  have  committed,  by 
thought,  word,  and  deed,  against  thy  Di¬ 
vine  Majesty.  .  .  .  We  do  earnestly  repent, 
and  are  heartily  sorry  for  these  our  mis¬ 
doings;  the  remembrance  of  them  is  griev¬ 
ous  unto  us,  the  burden  of  them  is  intoler¬ 
able.’ 

44  Rupert,  this  is  neither  the  groan  of 
mechanism  nor  the  cry  of  an  animal.  It  is 
the  cry  of  a  spirit  conscious  of  something 
to  be  reached  at,  something  to  become. 
This  intense,  this  undeniable,  this  absolute 
consciousness  of  Ihood  and  of  Responsi¬ 
bility,  is  not  a  speculation  of  philosophy, 
but  the  most  certain  fact  of  each  man’s 
existence.  You  know  you  are  yourself. 
Then,  when  a  man,  conscious  of  this  Ihood, 
perceives  from  his  observations  and  dis¬ 
coveries  that  knowledge  can  give  no  ac¬ 
count  of  the  origin  of  life  on  this  planet, 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


113 


that  the  physical  world  can  have  its  exist¬ 
ence  only  in  Mind,  and  that  the  visible 
labour  of  the  laws  of  nature  is  to  educe  a 
higher  from  a  lower, — then  is  he  not  most 
rational  when  he  concludes  that  his  intense 
conviction  of  personality  is  the  pressing 
intimation  of  a  destiny  which  makes  use 
of  this  planet,  as  he  himself  makes  use  of 
his  body,  a  destiny  which  is  infinite,  eternal, 
and  immortal!  He  need  not  think  that  he 
will  be  exactly  as  he  is  now,  when  the  vest¬ 
ure  of  the  body  falls  from  him.  He  need 
not  trouble  exactly  to  define  with  himself 
what  the  term  personality  connotes.  All 
he  knows  at  present  is  this,  that  he  is  con¬ 
scious  of  being  conscious,  that  he  is  not 
part  of  another  individual,  nor  depends 
in  any  real  sense  for  his  self-conscious  ex¬ 
istence  on  the  existence  of  another  indi¬ 
vidual,  that  when  he  says,  4  I  think,’  he 
expresses  a  spiritual  truth,  that  when  he 
says,  4  I  will,’  he  proclaims  himself  free 
and  self-determining; — and  he  knows  that 
it  is  this  sense  of  4  I  am  I  ’  that  is  the  im¬ 
mortal  and  imperishable  spirit  of  his  life, 
the  personality,  or  whatever  else  he  likes 
to  call  it,  which  will  survive  the  decay  of 
the  body. 

44  The  more  aware  a  man  is  of  himself, 
and  the  more  perfectly  he  is  able  to  realize 
himself,  the  more  certain  does  it  seem  to 


114 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


him  that  his  personality  is  his  very  self 
and  that  this  personality  transcends  the 
matter  which  composes  his  body.  Com¬ 
pare,  with  the  intellectual  man,  alert  in  all 
his  faculties,  rejoicing  in  his  self-realiza¬ 
tion,  and  conscious  of  his  freedom  and  his 
power,  the  lout  who  is  scarcely  aware  of 
his  own  name,  whose  personality  eludes 
his  effort  to  grasp  it,  and  whose  life,  if  it 
be  not,  like  the  animals,  walking  in  sleep, 
is  at  least  walking  in  a  drowse. 

“  Self-realization,  Rupert,  is  the  passion 
of  life.  It  is  the  supreme  thing  of  human 
existence.  And  since  this  world  proceeded 
from  Mind  and  exists  for  Mind,  and  has 
everlasting  purpose,  the  supreme  thing  of 
this  world — that  is,  the  passion  for  self- 
realization  which  expresses  itself  in  love, 
in  art,  in  conduct,  in  knowledge,  and  most 
of  all  in  the  mystical  paradox  of  self-sacri¬ 
fice, — will  not  perish  with  the  world,  will 
not  perish  with  its  physical  vehicle,  but 
will  unite  itself  with  God  who  is  the  Life 
and  the  passion  of  the  Life.  I  cannot  repair 
my  body  when  it  breaks  down ;  I  do  nothing 
to  change  the  various  foods  I  eat  into 
blood,  nor  do  I  exercise  any  direction  in 
changing  that  blood  into  bone  and  tissue, 
hair  and  teeth;  I  am  but  the  tenant  of  my 
brute  body  and  know  only  when  it  calls 
for  nourishment  and  when  it  refuses  to  do 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


115 


my  will.  But  I  am  my  will.  I  am  my  soul. 
It  is  I  who  love;  it  is  I  who  suffer;  it  is  I 
who  struggle;  it  is  I  who  can  be  pierced 
by  injustice,  enchanted  by  beauty,  exalted 
by  love  ;  it  is  I  who  passionately  desire  im¬ 
mortality,  not  for  myself  alone,  but  for 
those  who  love  me ;  and  it  is  I  who  hunger 
and  thirst  after  the  glory  of  God,  hunger¬ 
ing  and  thirsting  because  I  cannot  be  satis¬ 
fied  till  I  behold  His  likeness.” 


VI 


CONCERNING  PERSONALITY 

“f  |  ^HEN,  I  conclude  from  everything 
I  you  have  said  to  me,  that  our  chief 
reason  for  believing  in  God  is  to  be 
found  in  ourselves?  ” 

1 4  That  is  so,  Rupert.’ ’ 

‘ 4  And  you  are  satisfied  that  you  know 
sufficient  about  yourself  to  decide  this  tre¬ 
mendous  question  with  absolute  cer¬ 
tainty?  ” 

“  With  absolute  certainty.” 

“  But  you  will  agree  with  me  that  in 
making  such  an  assertion  you  cannot  pos¬ 
sibly  be  speaking  as  a  man  of  science  or  in 
a  scientific  manner?  ” 

4  4  Are  you  still  dominated,  then,  by  a 
fear  of  words!  The  man  whom  we  call 
a  man  of  science  is  an  expert  in  one  par¬ 
ticular  branch  of  study.  Suppose  that  an 
embryologist,  who  knows  nothing  whatever 
of  astronomy,  should  say  to  you  that  in 
addition  to  the  rotations  and  circlings  of 
planets,  the  whole  vast  sidereal  heavens 
are  moving  onwards,  moving  forwards, 
through  space ;  would  you  say  to  him  that 

116 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


117 


he  is  not  speaking  as  a  man  of  science  or 
in  a  scientific  manner,  because  he  has  not 
mastered  even  a  text-hook  in  astronomy! 
May  the  expert  not  know  something  else! 
May  nobody  speak  but  the  expert,  and  then 
only  as  an  expert!  I  know  certain  things: 
I  possess  a  degree  of  knowledge :  and  I  am 
intellectual  enough  to  understand  the  ex¬ 
pert  in  science  when  he  can  express  him¬ 
self,  which  is  not  very  often,  in  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  literature.  If  you  refuse  to  hear 
me  because  I  am  not  a  man  of  science,  then 
I  say  to  you  that  you  must  refuse  to  hear 
the  biologist,  the  physicist,  and  the  chem¬ 
ist,  even  on  their  oivn  sciences,  if  they  are 
not  also  psychologists.  For  to  speak  of 
things  with  no  scientific  knowledge  of  the 
instrument  by  which  things  are  perceived 
and  their  relations  unified,  is  to  speak  as 
I  speak  of  the  world  and  its  contents,  is 
to  speak  not  as  an  expert.” 

“  You  purposely  misunderstand  me.  I 
do  not  challenge  your  right  to  speak,  but 
I  merely  ask  you  to  admit  that  in  saying 
what  you  have  just  said  about  God  and 
the  soul  you  are  not  speaking  as  a  man  of 
science  or  in  a  scientific  manner — that  is  to 
say,  you  have  no  facts  in  science  to  sup¬ 
port  this  particular  theory  of  God’s  exist¬ 
ence.  You  must  agree  with  me  that  my 
conclusion  is  reasonable  and  obvious.” 


118 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


“  It  is  only  technically  reasonable  and 
only  technically  obvious.  Let  me  prove  to 
you  that  I  am  not  splitting  a  tine  hair. 
Knowledge,  if  it  have  any  field  at  all,  has 
the  whole  field  of  existence.  The  physicist 
and  the  biologist,  as  you  can  see  plainly, 
only  occupy  corners  in  this  field.  Their 
knowledge  is  partial  knowledge.  You  may 
read  a  whole  library  of  physiology  without 
coming  upon  one  reference  to  the  light  in 
a  woman’s  eyes,  and  a  whole  library  of 
biology  without  one  reference  to  the  com¬ 
fort  of  a  spring  mattress  or  the  delicious 
flavour  of  green  peas.  You  will  not  tell  me 
that  a  man  has  no  right  to  speak  of  flowers 
who  is  not  a  botanist,  or  that  a  man  who  is 
not  a  professor  of  zoology  can  possess  no 
knowledge  of  animals.  Laplace,  who  drew 
himself  up,  was  given  a  post  by  Napoleon, 
and  he  made  such  a  muddle  of  it  that  Na¬ 
poleon  had  to  get  rid  of  him.  Frederick 
the  Great  used  to  say  that  if  he  wished  to 
ruin  an  empire  he  would  commit  it  to  the 
care  of  philosophers.  Let  me  suppose  that 
you  are  a  man  of  science,  and  that  you  find 
in  your  particular  abstracted  field  of  in¬ 
quiry,  in  your  particular  detached  idea,  no 
need  of  the  hypothesis  of  God :  and  let  me 
further  suppose  that  when  I  tell  you  of 
my  conviction  that  God  exists,  you  retort 
upon  me  that  I  am  not  a  man  of  science 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


119 


and  can  know  nothing  about  the  matter, 
that  I  am  dealing  only  with  assump¬ 
tions.’  ’ 

4  4  Very  good !  That  is  the  exact  word  for 
my  purpose.  Assumptions — you  deal  only 
with  assumptions.  Mind  you,  I  don’t  say 
that  your  assumptions  are  not  well  founded, 
but  I  do  say - ” 

44  Well,  I  should  ask  you  these  questions. 
You  have  decided  that  the  world  is  not  flat, 
and  that  it  revolves  round  the  sun:  pray, 
how  have  you  decided  these  matters  !  An¬ 
swer,  Rupert,  in  the  role  of  an  anti-Theistic 
man  of  science.” 

u  We  have  decided  those  questions  by 
the  evidence  of  the  natural  world.” 

44  Evidence  presented  by  the  things  con¬ 
cerned!  ” 

44  Yes.” 

44  Through  what  means  is  that  evidence 
presented!  ” 

44  Our  senses.” 

44  But  how  do  you  know  your  senses  are 
not  deceiving  you!  ” 

44  By  comparing  our  impressions  with 
the  impressions  of  other  men.” 

4  4  Other  men !  But  the  senses  of  human¬ 
ity  may  be  as  false  and  distorting  as  con¬ 
cave  mirrors.  What  history  have  you  of 
these  human  senses!  Give  me  their  lineage 
and  describe  their  guarantee.  Do  you 


120 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


gravely  tell  me  that  yon  place  implicit  trust 
in  senses  which  have  been  derived  on  yonr 
own  showing,  by  an  accidental  process 
working  in  an  unintelligent  slime?  What 
an  assumption  is  that! — it  is  the  Aaron’s 
rod  of  all  other  assumptions.  Man  is  an 
accident,  you  say.  But,  goodness  me,  you 
place  confidence  in  his  senses,  and  in  the 
mysterious  nonentity  behind  his  senses 
which  unifies  those  sensory  impressions  and 
arrives  at  conclusions  upon  them!  Come 
now;  what  would  you  say  of  a  man  who 
picked  up  a  glass  to  examine  some  very 
small,  some  almost  invisible  object,  with¬ 
out  first  examining  this  instrument  to  see 
that  it  was  a  magnifying  glass?  Suppose 
he  picked  up  a  piece  of  green  glass  and, 
looking  at  a  speck  of  white  chalk,  told  you 
that  it  was  green.  What  would  you  say  of 
his  description  and  what  would  you  think 
of  his  method?  In  other  words,  Rupert, 
why  should  you  trust  a  single  theory  of 
science  before  the  men  of  science  have  re¬ 
ported  upon  the  intelligence  with  which 
they  work?  ” 

6  ‘  I  certainly  think  that  we  ought  to  know 
more  about  our  senses,  and  in  particular 
more  about  our  personality.” 

“  In  other  words,  before  any  other  ology 
we  ought  to  have  a  grammar  of  episte¬ 
mology?  We  ought  to  know  how  we  know? 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  121 

And  we  ought  to  know  who  we  are  who  say 
that  we  know  ?  ’  ’ 

44  That  would  settle  the  whole  business !  ” 
44  Well,  Rupert,  we  have  made  one  very 
important  discovery  in  this  particular 
branch  of  knowledge.  Psychology  is  be¬ 
coming  experimental,  and  is  now  somewhat 
courageous.  We  have  discovered  that  the 
thing  which  calls  itself  the  Ego,  the  thing 
which  says,  4 1  think,’  4  I  feel,’  4  I  do,’  the 
thing  which  is  our  self-conscious  self, — we 
have  discovered  that  this  is  only  one  point 
of  our  veritable  and  complete  self.” 

44  What  do  you  mean  by  that?  Do  you 
mean  that  a  man  only  knows  a  point  of 
his  own  being?  ” 

44  That  is  what  I  mean.” 

44  But  how  can  you  know  that  there  is  a 
part  of  myself  which  I  do  not  know?  If 
I  do  not  know  it,  clearly  it  is  not  myself?  ” 
44  Whatever  inconveniences  this  dis¬ 
covery  may  present  to  you,  Rupert,  the  fact 
remains  that  your  self-consciousness  is  only 
a  part,  and  only  a  very  small  part,  of  your 
entire  personality.” 

4  4  Oh,  I  see  now  what  you  are  driving  at. 
You  are  speaking  of  the  theory  of  a  sub¬ 
conscious  self.  I  have  heard  the  phrase. 
But  what  does  it  really  mean,  and  how  on 
earth  can  such  an  assumption  be  proved?  ” 
44  Nothing,  I  think,  can  more  easily  be 


122 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


proved.  I  should  like  to  tell  you,  if  we  had 
the  time,  of  strange  instances  of  what  is 
called  multiplex  personality,  and  I  should 
like  to  tell  you  about  devil-possessed  people 
whom  I  have  talked  to  in  out-of-the-way 
places  in  India — people  moral  and  good, 
who,  directly  the  evil  spirit  fell  upon  them, 
fled  to  burying-grounds,  cut  themselves 
with  knives,  rolled  themselves  in  garbage, 
and  drank  the  blood  of  animals.  But  this 
would  take  too  long.  Let  me  begin  very 
simply.  Have  you  ever  gone  to  bed,  Ru¬ 
pert,  with  the  notion  that  you  must  wake 
at  an  hour  earlier  than  your  usual  custom, 
in  order,  let  us  say,  to  catch  a  train?  ” 

“  Oh  yes;  I  have  often  done  that;  par¬ 
ticularly  in  the  hunting  season.  It  is  cer¬ 
tainly  curious  how  one  does  wake  up,  and 
occasionally  at  the  very  moment  one  in¬ 
tended.  But  you  don’t  tell  me  that  you 
seriously  believe  in  possession  by  evil 
spirits?  ” 

‘  4  Who  is  it  that  raps  on  the  door  of  your 
consciousness,  Rupert,  at  that  unwonted 
moment?  and  who  bids  you  shake  off  the 
final  hour  of  your  habitual  sleep?  Who 
calls  you?  It  is  not  you  yourself,  as  you 
know  yourself,  for  it  is  that  very  you  which 
is  called,  which  is  roused  out  of  sleep,  which 
looks  hastily  at  the  clock  to  acquaint  itself 
with  the  time.  But  who  calls  you?  It  is 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


123 


something,  something  intelligent  and  alert, 
something  that  has  its  eye  on  the  clock!  ” 
“  I  know!  It  is  certainly  most  strange. 

But  about  devil-possession - ” 

“  Consider  this  further  aspect  of  the 
question,  Rupert.  Dr.  Milne  Bramwell, 
who  is  an  authority  on  hypnotism,  told  me 
some  years  ago  that  he  was  once  so  struck 
by  the  calm  and  repose  of  a  patient,  a 
dressmaker,  that  he  spoke  to  her  during 
her  trance,  and  asked  her  if  she  knew  any¬ 
thing  about  her  mental  experiences  in  for¬ 
mer  states  of  hypnosis.  Now,  you  must  re¬ 
member,  in  considering  this  woman’s  an¬ 
swer,  that  it  was  spoken  during  hypnosis. 
That  is  very  important.  She  said,  during 
hypnosis,  to  Dr.  Bramwell: — 

‘  When  you  do  not  speak  to  me,  and 
nothing  occurs  that  interests  me  directly, 
I  generally  think  of  nothing  and  pass 
into  a  condition  of  profound  restfulness. 
Once,  however,  I  had  an  important  dress 
to  make,  and  was  puzzled  how  to  do  it. 
After  you  had  hypnotized  me  and  left 
me  resting  quietly,  I  planned  the  dress. 
When  I  awoke  I  did  not  know  I  had  done 
so,  and  was  still  troubled  about  it.  On 
my  way  home  I  suddenly  thought  how 
the  dress  ought  to  be  made,  and  after¬ 
wards  successfully  carried  out  my  ideas. 
I  believed  I  had  found  the  way  out  of  the 


124 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


difficulty  there  and  then  in  the  waking 
state:  I  now  know  I  did  so  previously, 
when  hypnotized/ 

One  could  talk  for  a  day  on  this  single 
story,  Rupert,  for  it  contains  at  every  point 
amazing  evidence  for  the  truth  of  our  as¬ 
sumption  that  personality  transcends  con¬ 
sciousness.  This  woman  spoke  in  her 
trance;  she  gave  an  intelligible  answer  to 
an  intelligent  question;  she  was  in  all  re¬ 
spects  a  rational  being.  Moreover,  she 
possessed  a  memory;  she  could  go  back  in 
time  and  say,  4  Once,  however,  I  had  an 
important  dress  to  make/  ...  4  I  believed 
I  had  found  the  way  out/  .  .  .  And,  4  I 
now  know/  But  hear  the  end.  Dr.  Bram- 
well  told  me : — 

4  When  she  was  aroused  from  hyp¬ 
nosis  she  had  no  more  recollection  of 
what  she  had  just  said  to  me  than  the 
man  in  the  moon:  she  still  believed  she 
had  fashioned  the  problematical  dress  in 
a  state  of  ordinary  consciousness/ 

Dr.  Bramwell  challenged  her  on  this  point, 
and  she  said  that  she  must  have  been  talk¬ 
ing  nonsense  in  her  trance,  since  she  re¬ 
membered  quite  well  how  she  had  worked 
out  this  difficult  dress  on  the  way  home 
from  her  treatment.  So,  you  see,  the  self 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


125 


that  spoke  in  trance  had  a  wider  range  and 
a  truer  memory  than  the  normal  self :  the 
woman  in  trance  knew  about  the  woman 
out  of  the  trance,  while  the  woman  out  of 
the  trance  knew  nothing  at  all  of  the  woman 
in  the  trance.  She  could  only  say  that  it 
must  have  talked  nonsense — which  is  ex¬ 
actly  what  anti-Theists  say  of  religious 
people,  and  for  the  like  reason.  The  wak¬ 
ing  woman  knew  nothing  about  the  trance 
woman.  This  case,  Rupert,  is  one  of  hun¬ 
dreds.  For  the  far-carrying  power  of  sug¬ 
gestion  here  is  a  report  made  by  Professor 
Beaunis  to  the  Societe  de  Psychologie 
Physiologique,  and  abridged  by  Frederic 
Myers : — 

4  On  July  14th,  1884,  having  hypnotized 
Mdlle.  A.  E.,  I  made  to  her  the  follow¬ 
ing  suggestion,  which  I  transcribe  from 
my  note  made  at  the  time :  u  On  J anu- 
ary  1st,  1885,  at  10  a.m.,  you  will  see  me. 
I  shall  wish  you  a  happy  new  year  and 
then  disappear.  ” 

4  On  January  1st,  1885,  I  was  in  Paris. 
I  had  not  spoken  to  anyone  of  this  sug¬ 
gestion.  On  that  same  day  Mdlle.  A.  E., 
at  Nancy,  related  to  a  friend  (she  has 
since  narrated  it  to  Dr.  Liebault  and  my¬ 
self)  the  following  experience.  At  10 
a.m.  she  was  in  her  room,  when  she 
heard  a  knock  at  the  door.  She  said, 


126 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


“  come  in,”  and  to  her  great  surprise 
saw  me  come  in,  and  heard  me  wish 
her  a  happy  new  year.  I  went  out  again 
almost  instantly,  and  though  she  looked 
out  of  the  window  to  watch  me  go,  she 
could  not  see  me.  She  remarked  also, 
to  her  astonishment,  that  I  was  in  a  suit 
of  summer  clothes — the  same,  in  fact, 
which  I  had  worn  when  I  had  made  the 
suggestion  which  thus  worked  itself  out 
after  an  interval  of  172  days/ 

Now,  Rupert,  this  at  least  is  certain, — 
whatever  personality  may  be,  it  is  some¬ 
thing  greater  than  we  suppose.  By  that  I 
mean,  our  knowledge  of  ourselves  is  only 
fragmentary;  an  area  of  our  personality 
remains  to  be  explored.  Instead,  then,  of 
being  at  the  end  of  this  adventure  which  we 
call  life,  we  are  only  now  at  the  beginning. 
We  have  worked  our  way  from  the  circum¬ 
ference — physical  science — to  the  mystic 
hidden  centre  of  life — ourselves,  our  souls, 
our  bodies;  and,  coming  to  that  centre, 
viewing  the  circumference  from  that  cen¬ 
tre,  we  find  that  existence  flows  over  and 
beyond  the  physical  circle,  we  see  clearly 
that  at  every  point  of  the  radius  it  surges 
into  the  eternal  infinite.  So,  you  perceive, 
the  field  of  science  cannot  be  restricted  by 
the  man  of  science;  the  same  curiosity,  the 
same  superstition,  the  same  belief  in  magic 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


127 


which  created  science,  urges  the  mind  of 
humanity  beyond  the  trivial  barriers  which 
agnostic  science  has  erected.  Man  will  dis¬ 
cover  the  world-mystery  by  discovering  his 
own.” 

“  Personality  is  certainly  a  great  and 
interesting  mystery.  I  must  think  over  this 
business  of  hypnotism.  It  is  a  very  good 
thing  that  reputable  and  properly  qualified 
men  of  science  have  turned  their  attention 
to  it.  I  should  not  be  at  all  surprised  if, 
through  hypnotism,  we  came  to  learn  some¬ 
thing  of  very  real  importance  about  our 
true  selves.  But  when  you  speak  of  devil- 
possession - ” 

“  Well  done,  Rupert!  You  enchant  me, 
and  you  encourage  me.” 

“  Oh,  I  am  nothing  of  an  obscurantist.” 

“  Quite  so.  You  are  a  man  who  wants  to 
know.  ’  ’ 

“  Exactly.” 

“  And  a  man  who  will  not  easily  be  per¬ 
suaded,  because  he  does  not  mean  to  be 
taken  in.  ’  ’ 

“  I  am  ready  to  accept  any  hypothesis 
that  really  works,  and  to  admit  any  evi¬ 
dence  that  is  really  conclusive.” 

“  Come!  you  are  at  least  a  man  who 
6  knows  what  is  what.’  Now  I  want  you  to 
see  that  before  waiting  in  the  spirit  of  Mr. 
Micawber  for  something  more  to  turn  up 


128 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


concerning  our  true  selves,  it  is  only  rea¬ 
sonable  that  yon  should  admit,  with  a  care¬ 
ful  and  judicious  thinker,  W.  Scott  Palmer, 
that  this  discovery,  already  made  and  al¬ 
ready  proved  over  and  over  again,  this 
discovery  of  a  greater  self,  a  wider  field  of 
personality  than  self-consciousness  covers, 
is  as  important  and  as  far-reaching  in  its 
influence  as  the  discovery  of  the  radio¬ 
activity  of  matter.1  Professor  William 
James  said: — 

‘  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  most  im¬ 
portant  step  forward  that  has  occurred 
in  psychology  since  I  have  been  a  stu¬ 
dent  of  that  science  is  the  discovery,  first 
made  in  1886,  that,  in  certain  subjects  at 
least,  there  is  not  only  the  consciousness 
of  the  ordinary  field,  with  its  usual  cen¬ 
tre  and  margin,  but  an  addition  thereto 
in  the  shape  of  a  set  of  memories, 
thoughts,  and  feelings  which  are  extra¬ 
marginal.  .  .  .’ 

Admit,  Rupert,  in  such  good  company  as 
this,  that  a  step  has  been  taken,  a  discovery 
has  been  made,  a  truth  has  been  ascer¬ 
tained,  which,  if  it  do  not  solve  the  mys¬ 
tery  of  existence,  deepens  our  sense  that 
there  is  a  mystery,  and  quickens  our  hope 

i  An  Agnosti&s  Progress.  By  Wm.  Scott  Palmer 
(Longmans) . 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


129 


that  the  mystery  lies  here  in  our  very 
selves,  closer  than  breathing,  nearer  than 
hands  and  feet,  and  is  here  for  our  explora¬ 
tion.  As  for  possession  by  evil  spirits,  I 
will  say  no  more  than  this,  that  Tennyson 
probably  said  what  was  perfectly  true  when 
he  remarked  that  in  a  boundless  universe 
is  boundless  better,  boundless  worse.  I 
have  met  men  in  London  who  have  de¬ 
scribed  to  me  that  temptation  pounces  upon 
them,  seizes  them,  drags  them  down  sud¬ 
denly  into  very  ugly  iniquity,  and  then 
leaves  them,  leaves  them  to  hate  and  abhor 
themselves.  Isn’t  everybody’s  experience 
of  sin  that  it  is  not  wholly  himself  who 
sins?  ” 

“  The  more  one  thinks  about  it,  the  more 
one  sees  that  life  is  a  mystery, — a  wonder¬ 
ful,  a  romantic,  yes,  but  a  teasing,  baffling, 
irritating  mystery.  I  heard  a  clever  fellow 
say  the  other  day  that  humanity  is  tired 
of  thinking.  He  prophesied  a  period  of 
utter  indifference  to  the  mystery  of  exist¬ 
ence.” 

“  Omar  Khayyam  and  Solomon  had  the 
same  feeling  some  centuries  ago.  The 
truth  is  that  men  of  science  and  philoso¬ 
phers  fatigue  humanity  by  their  jargons, 
and  aggravate  cheerful  people  by  their  at¬ 
tempt  to  monopolize  knowledge.  Religion, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  dissatisfied  the  hu- 


130 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


man  race  by  trusting  too  implicitly  to  tra¬ 
dition,  and  insisting  on  a  blank  obedience 
to  the  formal  regulations  of  institutional¬ 
ism.  But  men  must  know;  and  if  science 
cannot  make  knowledge  intelligible,  and  if 
religion  refuses  to  inquire,  refuses  to  de¬ 
velop,  mankind  will  make  a  new  knowledge 
and  a  new  religion  for  itself.  And  this  is 
what  is  happening  just  now.  Men  have 
thrown  off  the  atheism  of  materialism  and 
the  anti-Theism  of  agnosticism;  religious 
people  are  beginning  to  throw  off  the  tra¬ 
ditionalism  and  the  dogmas  of  an  unimagi¬ 
native  clericalism.  Most  men  feel  that 
there  is  some  kind  of  God  and  that  they 
possess  some  kind  of  soul.  The  first  man 
who  can  present  to  them  in  ordinary  lan¬ 
guage  the  evidence  for  believing  in  a  Per¬ 
sonal  God  and  in  a  personal  soul  will  have 
more  followers  than  Copernicus  and  more 
disciples  than  Buddha.’ ’ 

“  You  really  think  that  there  is  a  move¬ 
ment  away  from  negation  and  agnosti¬ 
cism?  99 

“  Of  that,  Rupert,  I  am  perfectly  sure. 
In  England  this  movement  is  beginning;  in 
Europe  it  has  already  gathered  momentum. 
If  you  were  not  so  immersed  in  the  strata¬ 
gems  of  party  politics,  you,  too,  would  be 
aware  of  this  remarkable  movement.  Berg- 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


131 


son  in  France,  Rickert,1  Eucken,  Windel- 
band,  and  Troeltsch  in  Germany,  Croce  and 
Varisco  in  Italy,  Hoffding  in  Denmark, 
and  Lossky  in  Russia,  these  men  are  draw¬ 
ing  multitudes  after  them — multitudes  of 
the  rising  generation.  They  are  creating, 
without  any  exaggeration,  a  new  spirit  in 
the  world.  Life,  one  may  say,  begins  to 
enlarge  its  own  borders.  The  soul  now 
looks  out  upon  the  indescribable  majesty  of 
the  universe  through  a  wider  and  a  cleaner 
window.  Men  perceive  that  the  physical 
world  is  for  them  but  a  small  skylight,  and 
a  skylight  that  materialism  has  tended  to 
darken  with  smuts.  They  look  about  for 
another  view-point,  and  Bergson  tells  them 
to  seek  within.  They  look  within  them¬ 
selves,  and  they  find  in  their  own  conscious 
selves  a  window, — wider  and  cleaner  than 
all  other  windows — through  which  they  can 
behold  the  truth  of  existence.  Humanity 
still  sees  through  a  glass,  but  not  so 
darkly.” 

“  I  have  tried  to  understand  Berg¬ 
son - ” 

“  Well,  he  takes  some  understanding. 

i  It  should  be  interesting  for  pessimists  and  gloomy 
deans  to  know  that  Rickert',  regarded  by  some  men 
as  the  greatest  idealistic  and  optimistic  philosopher  in 
Germany,  is  a  confirmed  invalid,  and  for  twenty  years 
has  been  wheeled  every  day  to  the  University  where  he 
lectures.  He  is  only  48. 


132 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


But  that  is  chiefly,  perhaps,  because  he  has 
something  to  say  which  has  never  been  said 
before.  Then,  I  think  he  is  too  desperately 
well  acquainted  with  the  terminology  of 
science  and  the  terminology  of  philosophy. 
He  desires  to  say  his  new  thing  without  dis¬ 
turbing  more  than  he  can  help  the  defini¬ 
tions  in  those  two  dictionaries.  He  doesn’t 
believe  in  controversy;  he  believes  in  truth 
and  in  the  persuasiveness  of  truth.  Philos¬ 
ophers  are  all  a  little  afraid  of  each  other. 
They  dare  not,  for  instance,  write  philos¬ 
ophy  as  Carlyle  wrote  history :  they  are  ter¬ 
ribly  aware  of  the  need  for  an  exact  defini¬ 
tion  of  their  terms.  There  is  at  present 
no  magnificent  Futurist  among  them.  But 
I  am  sure  from  what  I  know  of  M.  Berg¬ 
son’s  friends  that  if  you  were  to  sit  and 
talk  with  him  he  would  be  as  lucid  and 
charming  as  was  William  James.” 

“  He  makes  a  man  think.” 

“  That,  I  take  it,  is  his  object  in  think¬ 
ing  himself.  But  you  know  what  he  said  to 
the  mondaine f  At  the  conclusion  of  one  of 
his  lectures  in  Paris  a  beautiful  creature 
exclaimed  to  him,  ‘  Oh,  my  dear  Mr.  Berg¬ 
son,  how  you  have  made  me  think !  ’  And 
he  answered  and  said,  bowing  for  forgive¬ 
ness,  ‘  Pardon,  madame,  pardon!  ’  ” 

“  What  is  it  he  teaches?  I  mean,  can 
you  give  me  a  rough  idea?  ” 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


133 


“  He  teaches,  for  one  thing,  Rupert, — 
and  it  is  a  most  luminous  thing,  in  fact  a 
lantern  for  the  rest  of  the  journey, — that 
Life  is  for  ever  attacking  Matter,  seeking, 
as  it  were,  to  embody  itself  in  Matter,  and 
forcing  Matter  to  do  its  will.  Whatever 
Life  may  be,  and  whatever  Matter  may  be, 
you  find  that  the  one  is  pushing  at  the  other, 
and  that  this  other  is  withstanding  it. 
Somehow  and  by  some  intelligence  the  ele¬ 
ments  of  protoplasm  are  drawn  together  : 
their  coalescence  does  not  result  in  Life,  but 
opens  a  door  for  Life  to  incarnate  itself. 
Life  enters  Matter.  Now  Life  is  not  om¬ 
nipotent  nor  omniscient.  It  makes  mis¬ 
takes.  It  gets  into  Matter  at  one  point  and 
commits  suicide  in  the  shape  of  the  masto¬ 
don.  It  gets  into  the  apteryx  and  loses 
its  power  to  fly  like  the  lark.  It  gets  into 
the  mole  and  misses  the  sight  of  the  eagle. 
It  gets  into  the  plant  and  loses  the  power 
of  locomotion.  It  gets  into  animals  and 
finds  it  can  advance  no  further.  There  is, 
in  fact,  only  one  open  door  for  Life,  only 
one  far-reaching  channel  through  the  ob¬ 
stinate  rocks  of  opposing  Matter,  and  this 
is  Man.  In  Man,  Life  finds  that  it  can  con¬ 
tinue  its  push,  its  thrust,  its  grasp.  In 
Man,  it  can  discover  and  invent:  more,  it 
can  attain  to  that  which  it  seeks  with  intel¬ 
ligent  passion, — the  divine  faculty  of  self- 


134 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


knowledge,  self-realization.  In  Man,  Life 
can  look  not  only  with  intelligence  at  the 
things  about  it,  but  at  its  very  self.  Man  is 
Life’s  looking-glass.  In  Man,  Life  sees  it¬ 
self.  Like  Narcissus,  Life  finds  in  Man  a 
fountain  that  reflects  itself;  but  the  re¬ 
flection  does  not  here  drive  to  despair  and 
death.  Life  desires  itself.  And  in  Man  it 
finds,  so  far  as  this  planet  is  concerned,  its 
one  opportunity  for  evolution, — that  is  to 
say,  for  continued  growth,  continued  ex¬ 
perience,  continuous  power,  for  increasing 
and  intensifying  the  likeness  of  itself.  This, 
in  simple  language,  and  without  the  scien¬ 
tific  evidence  he  accumulates,  is  one  of 
Bergson’s  teachings.  And  from  this  we 
learn  to  look  more  and  more  within  our¬ 
selves,  and  to  study  Life  as  we  find  it  in 
ourselves.  Personality  attracts,  as  a  key 
to  the  mystery.” 

“  I  can  understand  what  you  have  told 
me.  But  is  this  force  of  Life  an  entity,  or 
does  it  become  an  entity?  I  mean,  after  a 
man’s  death  what  becomes  of  the  Life  that 
informed  his  body?  ” 

“  That  is  what  we  are  now  setting  our¬ 
selves  to  discover.  Philosophy  and  Science 
are  moving  towards  the  sphere  of  Psy¬ 
chology.  I  have  already  told  you  that  we 
now  possess  evidence  of  a  subliminal,  or 
extra-marginal,  consciousness.  Men  find  in 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


135 


the  phenomena  of  what  we  call  disintegra¬ 
tions  of  personality,  in  the  phenomena  of 
telepathy,  in  the  phenomena  of  phantasms 
— phantasms  both  of  the  living  and  the  dead 
— evidence  for  the  belief  that  personality  is 
definitely  spiritual.  We  find  there,  at  any 
rate,  nothing  to  make  us  doubt  our  religious 
intuitions,  much  to  make  us  feel  that  re¬ 
ligion  is  God  immament  with  Man.  I  do 
not  mean,  Rupert,  that  Life  is  God — al¬ 
though,  strictly  speaking,  everything  that 
is  is  God.  But  I  mean  that  Life  proceeds 
from  God,  that  it  leaves  God  with  a  definite 
direction,  but  with  freedom  of  choice.  And 
I  think  that  this  Life  attains  personality  in 
man,  just  as  evolution  in  the  nebulae  attains 
form  in  planets  and  suns ;  and  this  person¬ 
ality  in  Man,  so  it  seems  to  me,  has  the 
power,  as  it  were,  to  weave  for  itself,  out 
of  its  experience  and  the  purity  of  its 
passion,  a  spiritual  form,  to  become  a  self- 
conscious  spiritual  entity.’’ 

“  That,  of  course,  is  the  whole  point. 
Otherwise  your  Bergsonism  ends  in 
Buddhism.” 

“  But  you  know  how  Christ  differs  from 
Buddha.  To  Buddha  life  was  incurably 
bad :  it  was  forbidden  a  man  to  desire  even 
good  deeds,  lest  he  be  born  again  to  the 
treadmill  of  conscious  existence,  as  a  re¬ 
ward  for  his  good  deeds.  But  with  Christ 


136 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


the  word  is,  4  I  am  come  that  they  might 
have  Life,  and  that  they  might  have  it  more 
abundantly Bergsonism  for  me  is  Chris¬ 
tianity  in  Italics.  Bergson’s  emphasis  is 
Life,  and  Christ  said,  4  I  am  the  Life.’  He 
also  spoke  of  Himself  as  the  Door, — the 
Door  of  the  spirit,  as  Man  is  the  door  of 
life.  Do  not  think  for  a  moment  that  Berg¬ 
son  uses  the  term  Life  as  a  man  of  science 
uses  the  term  Energy.  For  Bergson’s  Life 
is  veritable  Life — a  thrusting,  desiring, 
grasping,  seeking,  and  passionate  tide  of 
existence.  Above  everything  else  this  Life 
can  love.  Look  how  it  loves  in  the  saint ! — 
look  how  it  loves  in  the  hero ! — look  how  it 
loves  in  the  mother !  Love  is  the  keynote  of 
human  life.” 

“  I  suppose,  then,  you  could  make  one 
gospel  of  the  teaching  of  Christ,  Plato,  and 
Bergson?  ” 

“  The  emphasis  tends  more  and  more  to 
fall  upon  love.” 

“  Of  course,  if  Life  really  is  a  seeking 
and  a  thrusting - ” 

“  Rupert,  I  want  to  tell  you  a  little  com¬ 
mentary  which  nature  once  added,  very 
kindly,  to  my  own  humble  philosophical 
studies.  I  had  spent  one  day  a  number  of 
hours  within  doors,  quite  lost  and  absorbed 
in  a  difficult  book  of  philosophy.  The  term 
Life  had  occurred  on  nearly  every  page  of 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


137 


this  book,  and  the  total  effect  of  my  read¬ 
ing  was  to  make  me  think  of  Life  as  a  blind 
and  mechanical  energy;  in  short,  as  an  ab¬ 
straction.  I  rose  from  my  reading,  went 
into  the  open  air,  and  the  first  thing  I  saw 
in  the  fields  was  a  lamb.  This  lamb,  four 
days  old,  was  sucking  milk  out  of  a  baby’s 
feeding-bottle  held  above  its  head  by  a 
laughing  child.  As  I  caught  sight  of  it,  a 

truth  of  life  flashed  into  mv  mind.  I  ex- 

«/ 

claimed,  with  an  immense  feeling  of  relief, 
with  a  delightful  sense  of  turning  home 
from  abstract  speculation  to  familiar  and 
affectionate  reality.  6  Life  is  something 
that  wags  its  tail.’  And  as  I  continued  my 
walk,  I  observed  with  a  new  gratitude  the 
joy  of  all  living  things,  their  delight,  their 
agreeable  delight  in  the  occupations  of  ex¬ 
istence;  and  I  said  to  myself,  I  will  never 
again  think  of  this  term  Life  without  re¬ 
membering  that  it  is  something  joyous  and 
glad ;  that  it  wags  the  tail  of  the  lamb,  that 
it  almost  bursts  the  throat  of  the  sky¬ 
lark,  and  that  it  shines  with  laughter  in 
the  eyes  of  a  child.” 

“  You  would  like  to  go  for  a  walk  in  a 
greenwood  with  my  baby,  a  three-year-old, 
extraordinarily  fascinating,  just  beginning 
to  talk,  and  astonishingly  observant.  She 
loves  flowers,  hates  beetles,  and  is  tre¬ 
mendously  put  about  by  anything  that  sug- 


138 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


gests  pain  to  her  mind.  On  my  word,  yon 
can  see  in  her  eyes  something  very  like  a 
spirit.” 

“  It  is  a  good  thing,  I  am  sure,  Rupert, 
to  remind  oneself,  whenever  the  mind  be¬ 
comes  nebulous  with  nebulae  or  mechanic 
with  the  too  smooth-working  hypotheses  of 
physical  science,  of  such  human  spirits  as 
Rabelais,  lying  back  in  his  chair  to  laugh, 
or  Swift,  smiling  over  an  epigram,  or  La 
Bruyere,  looking  up  from  his  deepest  stud¬ 
ies  and  saying  to  his  interrupter,  4  You 
bring  me  something  more  precious  than 
gold  or  silver,  if  it  is  the  opportunity  of 
obliging  you.’  But  I  still  think  that  the 
best  thing  to  do  with  anti-Tlieistic  philoso¬ 
phers  is  to  follow  the  example  of  Christ  and 
take  a  little  child  and  set  him  in  the  midst 
of  them.  There  is  something  in  the  eyes  of 
a  child,  I  know  not  how  to  describe  it,  which 
is  not  only  the  answer  to  many  questions, 
but  a  reproach  to  misgiving  and  impudence. 
You  know  what  Emerson  said  to  his  wife 
when  she  asked  him  for  a  proof  of  God’s 
existence  ? — he  told  her  that  if  she  could  not 
see  God  in  the  eyes  of  a  child  she  would  not 
see  Him  anywhere  else.” 

“  My  dear  fellow,”  he  said,  “  I  am  de¬ 
lighted  to  know  you  are  fond  of  children. 
I  honestly  confess  to  you  that  when  I  am 
with  this  exquisite  Barbara  of  mine,  I  en- 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


139 


tirely  forget  not  only  my  agnosticism  but 
my  fear  of  a  social  upheaval.  You  must 
really  come  and  make  her  acquaintance.’ ’ 

“  She  is  too  young  for  indigestible  choco¬ 
lates,  Rupert,  and  hardly  old  enough  for  a 
fairy  book.  I  will  bring  her  a  doll.  And 
when  I  am  with  her  in  your  greenwood,  and 
when  she  is  tired  of  picking  celandines, 
primroses,  bluebells,  and  cuckoo-flowers,  I 
will  take  her  on  my  knee — sitting  at  the 
mossy  foot  of  a  great  branching  oak — and 
I  will  tell  her  that  the  wax  doll  was  once 
a  part  of  the  flaming  nebula,  that  it  is  com¬ 
posed  of  the  most  distinguished  and  exclus¬ 
ive  chemicals,  that  its  beautiful  hair,  silken 
gown,  and  button  boots  all  came  from  this 
same  nebula  which  was  once  confluent  with 
the  sun ;  and  then  I  shall  tell  her,  solemnly 
and  dreadfully,  to  give  her  a  real  idea  of 
how  hot  the  doll  has  been  in  the  past,  and 
how  necessary  therefore  it  is  to  keep  it  well 
wrapped  up  in  cold  weather,  that  if  every 
particle  of  coal  now  in  the  earth  was  burnt 
up  in  one  top-hole  conflagration,  the  heat 
that  resulted  would  not  be  as  great  as  the 
heat  which  leaves  the  sun  in  the  tenth  part 
of  every  second. 

“  From  that,  Rupert,  I  should  proceed, 
if  she  were  still  awake,  to  explain  to  Bar¬ 
bara  how  it  is  that  while  she  can  walk  and 
fall,  can  laugh  and  cry,  can  kiss,  and  make 


140 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


ugly  faces  at  people  she  doesn’t  like,  the 
doll  preserves  a  settled  and  an  unyielding 
expression  of  candid  indifference,  and  is 
unable  either  to  cross  a  room  or  blow  her 
nose  like  a  young  lady.  In  brief,  Barbara 
(I  should  say),  you  are  alive  and  the  doll 
is  not.  If  we  can  find  a  magician  (I  should 
continue)  we  will  ask  him  to  make  your  doll 
alive,  and  until  we  find  a  magician,  we  will 
pretend  that  the  doll  is  alive  in  case  we 
should  hurt  any  vestigial  feelings  still  ex¬ 
isting  in  her  nebular  elements ;  but  in  our 
heart  of  hearts,  Barbara,  we  will  tell  our¬ 
selves  that  we  really  are  alive  and  that  the 
doll — although  some  clever  mind  certainly 
assembled  her  elements  together — isn’t 
alive  at  all;  and  from  this  fact  we  will  con¬ 
clude  that  it  is  a  very  nice  feeling  to  be 
alive,  and  if  there  are  any  rules  or  pre¬ 
scriptions  to  make  us  more  alive  still,  and 
to  keep  us  alive  till  we  know  everything 
there  is  to  know  and  find  out  all  the  beauti¬ 
ful  things  there  are  to  find  out,  why,  we  will 
get  hold  of  them  as  soon  as  possible  and  fol¬ 
low  them  to  the  last  letter. 

4  4  But  this,  Rupert,  is  to  play  with  phi¬ 
losophy.  Let  us  be  careful.  Let  us  pre¬ 
serve  a  becoming  gravity.  At  the  same 
time,  we  will  refuse  to  forget, — at  least 
Barbara  and  I  will,  whatever  you  may  do, 
— that  nature  has  her  jokes  and  that  man 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


141 


has  his  laughter.  What  a  multitude  of  nice 
things  has  come  out  of  the  nebula, — laugh¬ 
ter,  whimsical  humour,  and  lemons;  how 
fortunate,  too,  that  evolution  did  not  stop 
at  the  gorilla.  If  it  had  not  been  for  Man — 
can  you  imagine  it? — there  would  have  been 
no  tobacco,  no  Gothic  architecture,  not  even 
a  single  mechanistic  hypothesis.  Let  us  at 
least  be  grateful  that  life,  which  came  from 
the  nebula  with  Dick  Swiveller  and  Peg- 
gotty  amongst  its  other  potentialities,  such 
as  Handel  and  Samuel  Butler,  did  not  cry 
a  halt  at  the  apes.” 

“  One  thing  I  must  tell  you.  And  I  will 
break  it  as  tenderly  as  possible.  I  am  sorry 
to  say  that  with  all  her  good  qualities, 
many  of  which  certainly  tend  to  support 
your  philosophy,  Barbara  has  not  the  very 
least  idea  of  a  God.” 

“  What!  ”  I  cried,  getting  on  my  feet, 
“  do  you  mean  to  tell  me,  Rupert  (and  I 
spoke  very  solemnly),  that  she  is  proof 
against  love,  and  does  not  run  to  possess 
herself  of  beautiful  things?  ” 


VII 


LETTER  TWO:  CONCERNING  THE 
TENDENCY  OF  MODERN 
THOUGHT 


6  4 1%  /¥  Y  dear  Rupert,  you  asked  me  the 
I  V I  other  day  to  give  you  ‘  a  rough 
^  A  idea  ’  of  Bergsonism,  and  I  made 
the  best  attempt  I  could  at  that  particular 
moment  to  distil  one  drop  of  M.  Bergson’s 
philosophy  into  your  mind.  Since  then  it 
has  occurred  to  me  that  I  should  make  the 
still  greater  effort  to  furnish  you,  inside 
the  useful  boundaries  of  a  four  ounce  letter, 
with  some  idea  of  that  general  movement 
in  Europe  at  which  we  glanced  in  one  of 
our  gossips, — the  movement  of  thought 
away  from  materialism,  away  from  agnosti¬ 
cism,  quite  definitely  away  from  these  mel¬ 
ancholy  and  disastrous  philosophies,  and 
quite  as  definitely  towards  idealism  and 
theism,  or,  as  plain  men  would  say  it,  to 
belief  in  God. 

“  This  letter,  then,  shall  be  an  effort  to 
express  in  simple  language  the  general 
tendency  of  modern  thought,  not  the  par¬ 
ticular  thought  of  this  man  and  that,  but  a 
reasonable  synthesis,  if  that  word  be  not 

142 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


143 


too  pompous  and  exacting,  of  the  thoughts 
of  many  excellent  and  unintimidated  minds, 
— a  gathering  together  of  all  the  separate 
philosophical  tendencies  of  which  I  hear  au¬ 
thentically  or  with  which  I  chance  to  be  my¬ 
self  acquainted,  into  the  one  direction 
which  seems  to  the  boldest  of  these  thinkers 
the  inevitable  direction  of  human  thought. 

“  The  materialism  which  has  influenced 
your  mind,  and  depressed  it,  Rupert,  had 
its  rise,  give  me  leave  to  tell  you,  in  the 
decision  of  men  of  science  to  fix  their  at¬ 
tention  upon  the  physical  universe.  For 
many  years,  men  of  science  in  their 
search  for  truth  excluded  everything  else 
from  their  minds  but  matter,  and,  fixing 
their  attention  upon  material  things,  ap¬ 
parently  forgot  the  very  existence  of  the 
human  race.  Humanity  became  a  stupid, 
amateurish,  and  quite  non-significant 
thing  for  these  awful  grim-lipped  seekers 
after  truth.  But  into  what  James  Ward 
has  called  ‘  the  mathematical  ecstasy  ’  of 
these  physicists,  came  on  a  happy  day  one 
Hegel,  a  German  professor,  bringing  with 
him  Historic  Man,  Man  on  the  march,  Man 
the  traveller  and  the  adventurer,  with  his 
pilgrim’s  knapsack  of  experience  at  his 
back.  Some  commotion,  as  you  may  im¬ 
agine — for  no  man,  least  of  all  a  savant, 
likes  to  be  interrupted  in  an  ecstasy, — 


144 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


followed  upon  that  introduction.  Hegel’s 
language,  in  making  his  presentation  of 
Pilgrim  Man,  became  the  occasion  of  wrath 
and  the  subject  of  disputation.  He  had  not 
chosen  his  words  in  a  way  to  please  the 
professors.  Some  of  the  things  he  said, 
so  far  as  I  am  informed,  were  even  de¬ 
cisively  wrong.  But  while  this  disputa¬ 
tion  proceeded,  and  while  one  savant 
thought  Hegel  a  fool,  and  while  another 
tried  to  show  that  perhaps  he  was  a  well- 
meaning  fool,  there  all  the  time,  confront¬ 
ing  the  pundits,  and  obstinately  refusing 
to  be  taken  for  a  concept  or  a  no-thing, 
stood  Historic  Man  with  his  knapsack  at 
his  back.  What  was  philosophy  to  do  with 
him?  How  was  philology  to  escape  from 
him? 

“  It  was  urged  that  human  history  is 
‘  unscientific,’  and  therefore  cannot  have 
any  interest  for  the  man  of  science.  But  a 
thinker  named  Merz  pointed  out  that 
whether  Hegel’s  introduction  went  as  far 
as  it  should,  and  whether  history  was  scien¬ 
tific  or  unscientific,  4  all  that  commands  in¬ 
terest  in  the  created  world  is  the  existence 
of  individuality.’  He  also  mentioned  that 
Laplace,  in  dealing  with  the  general  laws 
of  motion  and  of  lifeless  masses,  had  left 
out  this  interesting  fact  of  individuality. 
The  philosophers  took  courage;  a  new 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


145 


school  began  to  open  a  sby  door.  Man  was 
invited  not  only  to  enter,  but  to  take  a 
cbair.  A  philosopher  more  daring  than  the 
rest  moved  a  resolution  that  Man  should 
be  asked  to  open  his  knapsack  of  experi¬ 
ence.  The  fat,  as  we  say,  was  in  the  fire. 
At  first,  this  knapsack,  presenting  diffi¬ 
culties,  seemed  to  the  physicist  rather  like 
an  oyster  really  is  to  a  man  without  an 
oyster-knife;  but  once  opened  there  was 
no  possibility  of  question  concerning  the 
contents,  save  only  this  one  consideration, 
namely,  how  with  the  fewest  mad-driving 
results  to  reduce  that  prodigious  and  in¬ 
extricable  chaos  to  some  reasonable  form  or 
semblance  of  form.  There ,  Rupert,  though 
packed  in  utmost  topsy-turvy — the  tears 
and  the  laughter,  the  sweat  and  the  blood, 
the  virtue  and  the  vices,  the  saintsliips  and 
the  devilships,  the  divine  discontents  and 
the  animal  complacencies,  all  mixed  in  ex- 
tremest  confusion — there ,  nevertheless,  was 
seen  to  be  the  veritable  facts,  and  the  only 
veritable  facts,  for  a  vital  philosophy  of 
human  life. 

“  From  that  moment  was  a  steady  unde¬ 
niable  movement  away  from  what  is  called 
Naturalism — that  is  to  say,  a  movement 
away  from  an  earth-fixed  and  an  out¬ 
wardly-directed  attention.  The  attention 
of  philosophy — and  philosophers,  mark 


146 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


yon,  from  Plato  and  Plotinns  down  to 
Hegel,  Kant,  and  Bergson  have  been  al¬ 
most  consistently  Idealists — turned  more 
and  more  inwards.  Bergson,  at  the  pres¬ 
ent  moment, — perhaps  the  most  inspired  of 
thinking  men  since  Plato, — approaches  the 
very  soul  of  man. 

“  Philosophers,  I  may  say  shortly,  tend 
nowadays  to  keep  themselves  ‘  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  individual  things. ’  The  battle 
over  words  is  finished.  Man’s  struggle  for 
rational  freedom  is  recognized  as  a  sovran 
reality.  Man  himself,  ‘  as  the  historical 
animal,’  is  considered  all  worthy  of  exami¬ 
nation.  And  now,  in  France,  in  Germany, 
in  Italy,  in  Russia,  and  in  England,  there 
is  a  movement  not  only  to  go  more  care¬ 
fully  over  the  accumulated  contents  of  the 
knapsack  of  experience,  but  actually  to  look 
into  the  deeps  of  the  man  himself.  Science 
and  Philosophy,  in  a  word,  are  now  face 
to  face  with  Mind. 

“  It  would  seem  that  there  exist  only  two 
ways  of  looking  at  life, — the  mechanistic 
way,  and  the  vitalistic  way.  The  mechan¬ 
ists  say  that  from  one  thing — matter — 
everything  else  has  come.  The  vitalists — 
need  I  bother  to  call  them  the  neo-vitalists? 
— say  that  from  the  beginning  there  have 
been  two  things — life  and  matter — and  that 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


147 


without  life,  matter  could  never  have  come 
to  be  anything  at  all,  must  always  have 
remained  matter.  Matter  is  the  stuff ;  Life 
is  Goethe’s  unseen  weaver  of  the  stuff. 
This  unseen  weaver  spins  the  stuff  into  a 
multiplying  host  of  things,  things  just  liv¬ 
ing,  things  half  living,  things  really  living; 
but  all  of  them  things  different  from  dead 
matter.  It  can  be  seen  at  work,  this  Life, 
for  it  has  strange  regenerating  qualities. 
Even  in  plants  these  qualities  can  be  ob¬ 
served.  Break  off  a  branch,  tread  upon  a 
delicate  flower,  and  the  life  within  tree  or 
plant  will  repair  the  damage.  In  animals 
these  qualities  of  regeneration  are  greater 
still ;  life  is  able  to  do  more  in  that  environ¬ 
ment.  If  you  extract  an  eye  from  the  head 
of  a  newt,  the  life  within  can  construct  a 
new  eye.  Cut  a  worm  in  half,  and  it  be¬ 
comes  two  worms, — two  worms  each  with 
a  separate  existence  of  its  own.  Evidently 
there  is  a  factor  in  these  material  things, 
psychical  in  its  nature.  Evidently  there 
is  a  duality, — Life  and  Matter. 

“  The  mechanist,  challenged  on  these 
points,  can  only  say  that  the  mechanism 
does  it.  But  note  well,  Rupert,  he  can  only 
say  this;  he  cannot  prove  it.  And  when 
you  ask  him  why  the  stone  does  not  grow 
and  why  a  log  of  wood  ceases  to  develop, 
he  says  nothing  at  all.  He  cannot  by  any 


148 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


mechanical  theory  bring  the  petrol  to  the 
engine  of  the  motor-car.  Schafer  himself 
has  declared  like  an  honest  man  that  he 
cannot  account  for  mind;  he  does  not  pre¬ 
tend  to  explain  the  soul.  Eucken  says, 
with  regard  to  the  mechanistic  theory  of 
the  universe,  that  he  can  agree  with  every 
word  that  Haeckel  says;  hut,  he  adds: 
‘  Haeckel  does  not  say  enough That  is 
the  point — the  something  else  in  matter! 
Eucken  insists  that  there  is  a  Reality  in 
the  universe  besides  the  physical  reality; 
and  he  says  that  this  spiritual  reality  pro¬ 
duces  its  things  precisely  as  matter  pro¬ 
duces  its  own  things.  There  is  a  History 
of  Man,  there  is  an  Evolution  of  Spirit. 

“  Let  us  think  about  mind. 

“  The  rudimentary  elements  of  mind  are 
found  in  creatures  lower  than  man.  We 
find  life  in  matter  thrusting  itself  toward 
mind,  trying  to  reach  mind,  and  not  satis¬ 
fied  with  any  degrees  of  mind.  We  get  this 
dualism  in  Bergson,  the  dualism  of  a  Life 
Principle  working  against  matter  and 
through  matter.  Need  we  be  surprised,  or 
jealous,  because  there  are  these  rudimen¬ 
tary  elements  of  mind  in  creatures  lower 
than  man! — but  how  could  it  be  otherwise, 
since  the  same  life  manifest  in  man  has 
worked  its  way  up  through  matter  to  man! 
Now,  obviously,  this  life-principle  is  of  a 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


149 


higher  nature  than  matter,  for  it  is  the 
thing  that  takes  obstinate  and  stubborn 
matter,  and  forces  it  towards  mind,  and 
reaches  in  man  real  mind — and  by  mind,  I 
mean,  civilization,  culture,  religion,  and 
love.  Matter  refuses  to  he  moulded  with¬ 
out  a  struggle.  It  is  only  moulded  with 
the  greatest  difficulty.  But  it  has  been 
moulded,  and  moulded  right  up  from  the 
lowest  forms  of  life,  to  a  Newton,  to  a  Shel¬ 
ley,  to  a  Damien.  Think  of  human  history, 
and  then  think  of  the  history  of  Life  up 
from  the  amoeba  to  Bergson,  Rickert, 
Eucken,  and  Bradley.  That  is  a  long 
march,  and  a  march  strewn  with  victories 
which  make  our  Waterloos  and  our  Trafal¬ 
gar  seem  like  the  scratchings  of  children. 

“  Men  who  perceive  that  this  mysterious 
vital  force  is  revealing  itself  more  and 
more  in  the  work  it  is  doing  on  matter,  con¬ 
clude  that  to  know  life  as  it  is,  or  to  reach 
the  least  idea  of  life  as  it  is,  wiser  it  must 
be  to  study  its  highest,  not  its  lowest  mani¬ 
festations.  From  the  simple  cell,  which 
has  no  speech,  they  turn  to  the  complex 
mind  of  man  which  can  utter  its  thoughts. 
From  the  infantile  mortality  of  embryol¬ 
ogy  they  lift  their  eyes  to  the  starry  heaven 
of  psychology — a  starry  heaven,  because 
psychology  contains  the  music  of  Shakes¬ 
peare,  the  smile  of  Cervantes,  and  the  faith 


150 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


of  Robert  Browning.  The  amoeba,  with  all 
its  good  qualities,  takes  a  back  seat. 

44  What  is  it  that  must  first  strike  our 
attention  directly  we  begin  to  reflect  upon 
mind?  Think,  as  a  mechanist,  of  your  own 
mind,  Rupert,  and  see  how  strange  a  thing 
it  is  that  you  not  only  take  into  your  ac¬ 
count  this  actual  Now,  this  express  road- 
hog  moment  of  the  Present,  but  that  you 
rationally,  calmly,  and  calculatingly  look 
forward  to  next  week,  next  month,  and  next 
year,  that  you  reach  back  into  the  mem¬ 
ories  of  your  life  gone  by,  back  even  into 
the  yellowing  experience  of  all  man’s  long, 
eventful  history,  back  further  still  in  imag¬ 
ination  to  a  lifeless  desert  of  a  world  and  a 
flaming  nebula  not  yet  even  the  Planet  Gol¬ 
gotha.  Your  mind,  Rupert,  creates  a  dual¬ 
ism  in  your  life.  It  makes  a  difference  in 
everything  you  experience  from  moment  to 
moment,  on  the  one  hand,  and  in  the  gen¬ 
eral  conclusions  or  systems  of  thought 
which  you  form,  on  the  other,  and  this  by 
means  of  the  million  complex  materials 
which  surround  you  in  the  exterior  world. 
You  are  not  a  machine,  though  you  call 
yourself  a  mechanist;  you  are  a  conscious¬ 
ness,  a  consciousness  which  has  a  memory, 
a  consciousness  which  anticipates,  a  con¬ 
sciousness  which  rebels  against  monotony 
and  becomes  irritable  under  repetition,  a 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


151 


consciousness  conscious  that  it  is  conscious. 
But  a  travelling,  a  flying  consciousness! 
You  never  have  a  Now  which  you  can  really 
call  your  own.  Hey  Presto! — and  where 
is  your  Now?  This  present  sentence  in 
my  letter  is  reaching  your  consciousness, 
but  before  the  first  word  of  the  next  shall 
have  caught  your  eye,  this  other  will  belong 
to  your  past,  yet  may  be  woven  into  your 
future.  Is  it  not,  Rupert,  a  difficult  thing 
for  you?  is  it  not,  to  be  quite  truthful,  an 
impossible  thing  for  you,  to  think  of  this 
mind  of  yours  as  a  machine? 

“  But  more  than  this: 

“  Ruminate  upon  the  matter — Bergson 
loves  that  word  ruminate — and  you  must 
see  that  man  the  egoist  has  never  once  lived 
on  his  own  subjective  experience.  He 
lives,  and  ever  has  lived,  on  what  has  been 
given  to  him  by  the  general  experience  of 
the  past  and  the  present.  This  collective 
experience  of  mankind,  presents  tc  his  OAvn 
individual  mind,  to  his  own  separate  con¬ 
sciousness,  a  state  of  things  higher  than 
his  own  private  experience.  He  recognizes 
in  the  general  experience  of  mankind  some¬ 
thing  that  transcends  his  own  individual 
experience.  He  knows  this.  And  he  also 
knows  that  he  is  bound  to  act  in  accordance 
with  this  knowledge.  He  perceives  that 
verily  no  man  liveth  to  himself. 


152 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


“  Have  yon  ever  asked  yourself  how 
such  conceptions  as,  let  us  say,  humanity 
and  goodness  come  to  you?  You  have  not 
created  them  yourself.  Your  mechanical 
mind  has  not  turned  them  out  by  its  own 
grinding.  They  come  to  you  from  outside 
of  you,  from  the  world  which  environs  you 
like  the  atmosphere.  You  form  from  them 
what  you  call  a  sense  of  Duty.  You  recog¬ 
nize  humanity,  you  recognize  goodness, 
and  you  feel  in  these  recognitions  a  certain 
restraint  laid  upon  your  freedom.  Duty! 
— that  is  a  strange  conception  for  a 
mechanical  mind.  And  these  conceptions, 
which  come  to  you  from  outside  of  your¬ 
self,  become  what  to  you?  They  become 
norms,  or  standards,  or  measurements,  for 
the  acts  of  your  own  individual  life.  How 
do  you  act — ask  yourself — in  a  difficulty? 
How  do  you  act  in  a  sudden  difficulty,  a 
catastrophe,  that  springs  upon  you  out  of 
the  dark  with  serpent  eyes  and  tiger  claws  ? 
Yes,  but  how  do  you  act  in  the  simplest 
difficulties  of  your  rational  life?  Think; 
and  you  will  see  that  every  act  of  yours 
must  be  influenced  by  these  considerations 
of  humanity,  goodness,  duty,  to  get  its 
place,  to  find  its  meaning.  You  choose,  you 
are  free  to  choose,  but  your  choice  is  guided 
by  the  movement  of  the  world.  If  you  were 
at  the  mercy  of  your  own  momentary 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


153 


changings  of  consciousness,  you  could 
make  no  progress  at  all  in  life.  Confronted 
by  danger,  you  would  throw  up  your  hands. 
Stricken  with  pain,  you  would  howl  like  a 
dog.  Chased  by  disaster,  you  would  turn 
and  flee.  But  a  state  of  things  other  than 
yourself  and  larger  than  yourself  and 
higher  than  yourself  presents  itself  to  you 
as  a  standard  of  life,  and  this  decides  your 
acts,  and  this  alone  accounts  for  your  de¬ 
velopment.  That  standard  of  life  is  super¬ 
individual,  over-individual,  in  the  sense 
that  you  must  refer  to  it  in  all  your  trans¬ 
actions  as  an  object.  True,  it  is  an  object 
of  thought,  it  does  not  exist  in  space,  it  is 
something  you  cannot  lay  hands  upon  or 
pick  to  pieces  with  a  darning-needle;  but 
it  is  manifestly  objective ,  manifestly  a  real 
thing;  you  did  not  create  it,  it  is  an  idea 
higher  than  man  himself,  it  is  an  incon¬ 
venient  idea  to  the  vast  majority  of  human 
beings;  and  your  own  individual  develop¬ 
ment  and  the  evolution  of  society  abso¬ 
lutely  depend  upon  holding  this  standard 
of  life  to  be  a  reality  more  urgent 
and  essential  than  any  individual  exist¬ 
ence. 

“  Now,  let  us  go  forward  another  step: 

“  All  the  idealists  of  the  world,  from 
Plato  downwards,  have  emphasized  this 
fact,  that  man,  in  his  best  moments,  real- 


154 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


izes  these  spiritual  ideals  to  be  the  things 
of  extremest  significance  to  his  life, — 
greater  than  anything  he  knows  and  de¬ 
sires  in  himself — and  that  the  whole  mean¬ 
ing,  value,  and  significance  of  his  life  lies 
in  being  true  to  this  realization,  being  true 
to  it,  yes,  and  developing  it  further.  Does 
not  this  thought  give  you  a  Deus  in  your 
machinery,  Rupert? — does  it  not,  indeed, 
make  you  oblivious  of  all  mechanical  sym¬ 
bolism?  A  man  sees  that  goodness  and 
love  make  a  standard  for  his  acts,  that  his 
highest  life  lies  in  dutiful  obedience  to  this 
perception,  and  further  that  in  some  mys¬ 
tic  but  overmastering  way  it  is  laid  upon 
him  to  intensify  that  perception.  Every 
man  desires  his  children  to  be  better  than 
himself.  And  whenever  he  acts  in  this 
spirit,  that  is  to  say,  whenever  he  is  at  his 
utmost  best,  he  sees  that  the  social  and 
moral  and  spiritual  ideals  of  humanity 
have  cosmic  significance.  He  sees  that  the 
whole  mental,  moral,  and  spiritual  evolu¬ 
tion  of  the  world  would  come  to  a  smash  if 
once  these  ideals  were  to  disappear.  He 
sees  that  human  society  without  them  is 
impossible  and  unthinkable.  He  argues 
and  decides  that  their  own  value  proves 
them  to  be  absolutely  necessary  and  abso¬ 
lutely  true. 

“  Now,  another  step: 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


155 


1  6  Man  grants  to  these  spiritual  ideals  a 
cosmic  significance.  Out  of  this  percep¬ 
tion,  forced  upon  him  by  the  realities  of 
human  existence,  springs  the  idea  of  God — 
or  shall  I  say  comes  the  emphasis  for  his 
intuitive  sense  of  an  Ultimate  Verity  to  be 
honoured  and  adored?  These  spiritual 
ideals  have  not  originated  in  man  as  an 
individual.  They  have  originated  as  a  very 
necessity  in  the  upward  march  of  the 
world.  And,  beholding  that  march  from 
the  lowest  forms  of  life  up  to  the  noblest 
human  creature  he  has  ever  known,  indi¬ 
vidual  man  cannot  hold  himself  from  the 
conclusion  that  there  must  be  in  the  uni¬ 
verse,  transcending  his  ideals  in  an  infinite, 
an  indescribably  glorious  degree,  a  con¬ 
summation  of  spiritual  life.  And  he  can¬ 
not, — look  which  way  he  will — find  the 
meaning  of  his  own  life,  if  he  withdraw 
from  this  sublime  conclusion.  It  is  for¬ 
ward  he  must  look,  forward  to  God,  not 
backward  to  an  Absolute,  if  he  would  find 
any  meaning,  value,  or  significance  for  his 
striving  life,  or  any  moral  permanency  for 
society.  Everything  is  forward  to  God,  or 
backward  to  chaos.  Man,  as  Coleridge 
says,  must  be  either  moving  onwards  to  the 
angels  or  backward  to  the  devils :  he  cannot 
stop  at  the  animal. 

“  Not  what  happened  at  the  beginning 


156 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


of  things,  Rupert,  but  what  is  happening 
now,  concerns  us  vitally,  can  possess  def¬ 
inite  meaning  for  our  minds.  Look  in¬ 
ward;  force  yourself  to  contemplate  your 
own  mind;  and  see  how  it  is  free  yet  re¬ 
strained  in  its  freedom  by  the  standards  of 
life  which  come  to  it  from  outside.  See, 
too,  that  these  standards  of  life,  though 
they  come  from  outside,  receive  their  pur¬ 
est  recognition  from  your  mind  when  you 
yourself  are  at  your  highest  best.  Society 
could  not  exist  without  these  ideals.  The 
life-principle  which  has  thrust  itself  into 
matter,  carrying  with  it  the  germs  of  this 
ideal  passion  up  from  protoplasm  to  the 
souls  of  men,  can  only  continue  to  thrust 
itself  still  forward  through  and  by  the  loy¬ 
alty  which  men  yield  to  these  ideals.  And 
since  it  is  still  forcing  itself  forward,  since 
it  is  still  unsatisfied  and  anhungered  and 
athirst  for  fuller  expression,  intenser  self- 
realization,  deeper  and  higher  personality, 
— must  we  not  believe  that  this  life-force 
not  only  came  out  from  Life,  but  that  it  is 
ever  making  its  way  back  to  the  Life-Giver, 
bringing  its  sheaves  with  it, — those  spirits 
who,  in  a  dark  hour  and  a  long  toil,  with 
many  stumblings  and  with  struggling  hope, 
have  loved,  if  only  with  Haeckel  ’s  earthly 
love,  the  Good,  the  Beautiful,  and  the 
True? 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


157 


“  This  I  believe  to  be  the  tendency  of 
modern  thought ;  and  this  you  must  believe, 
both  as  a  politician  and  an  individual  man, 
is  the  one  tendency  in  actual  life  which  can 
assure  to  the  world  a  greater  civilization 
and  a  nobler  human  being.  Your  master 
idea,  Rupert,  has  been  the  thought  of  evo¬ 
lution,  but  you  have  not  ruminated  on  that 
idea.  Bergson  asks  you  not  by  any  means 
to  abandon  this  idea,  but  to  turn  it  over 
and  over  in  your  mind  till  you  get  some¬ 
thing  more  out  of  it  than  a  bad  definition. 
Stick  to  your  evolution,  but  see  what  evo¬ 
lution  is. 

“  Note,  first  of  all,  that  evolution  is 
progress.  But  look;  it  is  a  progress  that 
alters  as  it  progresses.  And  look  again: 
this  is  not  simple  alteration,  but  integrat¬ 
ing,  creative  alteration.  If  an  arrow  be¬ 
came  in  its  flight  a  golf-stick,  or  a  cannon¬ 
ball  hissing  through  the  air  became  a  plum¬ 
pudding,  or  a  rock  tumbling  and  rolling 
down  a  mountain-side  became  a  sculptured 
fawn,  we  should  conclude  that  in  their  sev¬ 
eral  materials  was  an  element  hardly  to  be 
described  in  terms  of  matter  and  motion. 
But  the  mechanist  sees  his  inert  matter 
changed  in  its  journey  through  duration 
to  a  living,  beautiful  Florence  Nightingale, 
to  a  mystical,  self-abnegating,  God-adoring 
Octavia  Hill,  without  the  smallest  misgiv- 


158 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD 


mg,  not  that  he  can,  but  that  he  ought  to 
be  able  to  express  that  sublime  change  in 
terms  of  matter  and  motion. 

“  Note,  in  the  next  place,  Rupert,  and 
take  the  idea  to  bed  with  you — for  I  fear 
another  sheet  may  mean  an  extra  half¬ 
penny — that  evolution  is  not  the  mere  un¬ 
folding  of  a  scroll  already  written  from 
top  to  bottom,  every  comma  and  colon  in 
its  place,  not  a  blot  or  erasure  from  end  to 
end.  The  original  cell,  that  is  to  say,  did 
not  contain  in  wizard  miniature  all  the 
species  and  all  the  generations  of  living 
things:  the  first  cell  that  ever  emerged 
was,  distinctly  and  certainly,  not  every¬ 
thing  that  was  to  be.  Everything  that  hap¬ 
pened  to  the  first  cells  from  the  very  begin¬ 
ning  up  to  this  moment  was  organized  and 
directed.  Something  within  protoplasm 
forces  and  drives  the  unwilling  protoplasm 
into  that  which  matter  itself  never  con¬ 
tained,  even  in  the  least  degree  of  poten¬ 
tiality.  It  is  not  protoplasm  that  evolves, 
but  the  life  within  protoplasm. 

“  Keep  this  thought  in  your  mind, — one 
of  Bergson’s  flashes  of  inspiration,  pre¬ 
senting  for  the  first  time  to  mankind  a  vivid 
and  beautiful  picture  of  life, — and  you  will 
see,  as  your  favourite  philosopher  has  well 
said,  that  in  this  view  ‘  all  is  history,  the 
result  of  effort,  trial,  and  error;  here  we 


THE  PROOF  OF  GOD  159 

have  adventure  and  ultimate  achieve¬ 
ment.  ’ 

“  Why  does  Barbara  instinctively  turn 
from  a  hideous  beetle?  why  does  she  in¬ 
stinctively  grieve  for  a  creature  in  pain? 
Because  she  is  Life, — Life  pitying  Life 
that  has  gone  awry  or  is  brought  to  in¬ 
action. 

“  Good-night,  Rupert,  and  God  bless  you. 
As  you  fall  asleep,  let  your  thoughts  fly 
into  that  boundless  region  where  the  saints 
love  goodness  more  than  they  hate  vice, 
where  the  mystics  hear  the  rush  of  angel 
wings,  and  where  the  intuition  of  Barbara 
finds  enchanted  palaces,  fairy  princes,  and 
horses  with  wings.  It  is  an  open  question, 
says  Mach  (though  his  own  name  looks  to 
English  eyes  like  a  truncated  piece  of 
mechanism),  whether  the  mechanistic  view 
of  things,  4  instead  of  being  the  profound- 
est,  is  not  the  shallowest  of  all.  ’  The  shal¬ 
lowest  of  all ! 

“  Keep  yourself,  Rupert,  in  the  presence 
of  individual  things,  with  this  of  Coleridge 
in  your  mind :  ‘  A  person  once  said  to  me, 
that  he  could  make  nothing  of  love,  except 
that  it  was  friendship  accidentally  com¬ 
bined  with  desire.  Whence  I  concluded 
that  he  had  never  been  in  love.’  ” 


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